


War Crimes Repaid

by DarkPanda



Category: Final Fantasy VI
Genre: Airships, Bound, Caning, Cuckolding, Dirty Talk, F/M, Forced Marriage, Forced Orgasm, Forced Pregnancy, Imprisonment, Kidnapping, Loss of Virginity, Murderous Thoughts, Nipple Play, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Non-Consensual Groping, Non-Consensual Oral Sex, Painful Sex, Porn With Plot, Pregnancy Kink, Rape, Rough Sex, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, Violence, Watching, and lots of breast stuff, but not the main character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2020-03-05 11:18:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 25
Words: 35,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18827629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkPanda/pseuds/DarkPanda
Summary: Former Imperial General Celes Chere is prepared to die to atone for all the horrible things she did in service to the Empire, but things go from bad to worse.WARNING: Super dark. Please read the tags! I update the tags as I add material.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Read the tags! CWs abound, and tags will be updated as stuff happens. This is dark smut, and the first chapter is a violent rape. I don't condone anything like this in real life, but fanfic is where my dark fantasies live.
> 
> Also, this is going to go off-canon around Chapter 2, and I plan to go a totally different direction with Setzer's character. His decision to help the Returners just never made sense to me. He's a mega rich badass helping the Empire, but he's going to turn his life around because he gets cheated by a pretty face on a coin toss? I don't buy it.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Disillusioned with the Empire, former Imperial General Celes is held captive in South Figaro, awaiting her execution.

Celes was pushed into a basement room in South Figaro by the same Imperial corporal who had bound her hands too tightly behind her back upstairs. The room was small, windowless, and dimly lit by a lantern near the door. The drag marks in the dust on the stone floor told her that this room had been only recently emptied. If Celes didn't count herself and the soldiers, who had entered behind her and closed the door, the room contained only a single hard wooden chair against the right-hand wall, and a bucket against the left.

It had been foolish of Former Imperial General Celes to protest the poisoning of Doma Castle, stupid even. But ever since the Imperial sack of Maranda, Celes had become more and more disillusioned about the Empire's plans. 

She had to speak out when Kefka proposed the use of poison to turn the tide of a battle. It wasn't that Celes was a stranger to war crimes--she was responsible for her fair share when she led the attack on Maranda. But poisoning civilians? That went far beyond obtaining necessary military objectives. Celes was a woman of honor.

And now she was a traitor, imprisoned in a cold basement cell, awaiting her execution.

The corporal gave Celes another shove and she stumbled forward, catching herself just short of a disastrous fall. Without her hands to break it, Celes would be lucky to just skin her knees instead of breaking her neck. Her pale legs were bare between her blue, calf-high boots and her emerald leotard. The style was suited to planning a battle in a war room, not waiting out the night in a dungeon. At least they had let her keep her warm white cloak.

Celes walked toward the far wall. She intended to sit, to begin her meditations for the night, but the corporal's chilling words halted her before she had barely crouched. "She's got some nice legs on her, doesn't she, Jory? I bet she would feel real good wrapped around me."

In the silence of the basement room, Celes could hear the cadet even though he mumbled. "She's a traitor and she's going to be executed tomorrow. I wouldn't want to court her."

The corporal's chuckle was low and dark. "It's not courting I'm talking about."

Celes whirled to put her back against the wall. She was prepared to die for her principles, it was the honorable thing to do. But rape was not part of that equation. In truth, Celes was shocked that a soldier would suggest it. If his sergeant was under Celes's command, both would be flogged for lack of discipline.

Icy tendrils tried to wrap Celes's heart as the realized that this corporal's sergeant wasn't here, and she no longer had the kind of authority to discipline any soldier. She tried to ignore them. She had to be prepared to move.

The corporal pulled off his helmet, revealing a surprisingly handsome face with a square jaw and even features. He couldn't be much older than Celes, maybe in his early twenties, but his brown eyes were hard and there was a cruel twist to his mouth. He leered at Celes's leotard, and she wished that she could afford to turn, to shield her body from his eyes. It was more important to have the wall at her back. 

"Look at her tits heave. She's getting hot thinking about us."

"You're mistaken." Celes kept her voice even by the force of her will.

The corporal took a step closer. "You're getting real wet thinking about my cock, aren't you." It was like he wasn't even listening to her. "Nobody wants to die a virgin."

Celes wasn't a virgin, but there was no point in saying so. His justification was a thin thread, and if she called him on it, he would just twist it another way. Celes just shook her head, anxiety trying to twist her stomach into knots and fuzz her mind.

The corporal took a third step closer, stripping off his armored gloves and tossing them on the chair. "Don't worry, general. I'll fuck you until you scream."

"You don't want to do that." Ceres fought to keep her growing apprehension out of her voice. She spoke more to the cadet, the one the corporal had called Jory. Jory's chin was so smooth that Celes doubted it saw a razor more than once a week, and he was lingering back by the door with his helmet still on, as if he was afraid to take part in his corporal's game. The cadet's only reaction to Celes's words was to shift a little on his feet.

The corporal's face split in a grin. He was even more handsome when he smiled, which made his evil eyes worse by contrast. He took a final step closer. "You're wrong, there. I want to do this. You won't be the first woman I've had during the war. But the girl in Maranda just whimpered and cried. Not satisfying at all."

Celes's heart sank, but it didn't stop her trained body from reacting. He was now in striking range, and she lifted a knee at his crotch. The corporal predicted it, turning his leg in to protect his balls.

But the twist brought his head just a little closer to Celes, and the corporal did not predict her vicious headbutt. It caught him in the mouth and he staggered backward. 

The door, the door, Celes twisted around the corporal and darted for the door, her heart leaping in her chest. The startled cadet made a grab for her and missed, then Celes was at the door. Her bound hands were no help behind her back, so she dropped a shoulder and used the friction of her arm to try to turn the knob.

Locked! Either the cadet had locked it on the way in, or it could only open from the outside. 

A frustrated noise tore from Celes's throat. It was followed by a sharp gasp as she was abruptly dragged backward by her bound hands and thrown across the room. Pain flared in her shoulders, and she was sent tumbling and scraping across the floor, which was every bit as rough as she had expected.

The corporal's voice was a little thick, and blood dripped down his chin from a spilt lip as he spoke down at Celes. "It's been a while since I had a lively ride."

Celes violently twisted her bound wrists as she scrabbled on the rough floor, crabbing backward with her cloak tripping her up. The bindings held, and there was nowhere to go.

"Should I help?" Jory looked nervously from Celes to the corporal. 

"Yes, help me." Celes asked, but she didn't beg. She had more pride than that.

Jory looked to the corporal. "Corporal Edrick?" His wavering young voice confirming he wasn't much older than Celes, maybe also eighteen. "Should I bind her feet or something?"

The young man's words killed Celes's hope. She was in a locked room with a man who wanted to rape her, another who wouldn't help her, and her hands were bound, preventing her from working magic. _And here I thought I would spend the night meditating on my death,_ Celes thought bitterly.

The corporal, Edrick, turned his head and spat blood onto the stone floor. "Nah. It's better when they have some squirm to them."

Edrick approached too fast for Celes to get her feet under her. She pulled in her powerful legs to kick him, but her soft-soled boots didn't do any damage, or at least not enough to slow him down. Edrick ignored them as he bent over and grabbed a fist-full of Celes's long blonde hair, yanking her up by it and pulling a yowl from her throat. The spike of pain brought tears to her eyes.

"She sounds like a cat," Jory said. Through her unwanted tears, Celes saw him edge closer.

Edrick pinned Celes to the wall with an arm that had the weight of his body behind it. "A cat in heat, maybe."

Edrick was taller and heavier than Celes, and he continued to ignore her kicks, which were even weaker because she needed a leg to support herself. Edrick slid his hand across her stomach and up to fondle her breast in a sick parody of love-making. 

"Women love it when you do this," he instructed the cadet. "You ever had a woman before, Jory?"

"No." The younger man admitted. "She'll be my first. I had a sweetheart back home, but--"

"I'll go first, then." Edrick continued to grope Celes's ample breast through her leotard. "You don't want to ride this one until she's broken in a little."

Break her? They could rape her, but Celes knew that they wouldn't break her.

"Fuck you," she said, and she spat in Edrick's face.

He backhanded her. Celes could see it coming as he pulled back his arm, but she had nowhere to go to avoid it. The blow blossomed white in her vision, and pain clapped in her head like a bell.

She felt Edrick jerk down the front of her leotard, freeing her breasts in the cold air. With the stretchy fabric now under them, they pushed upward, and the cold tightened her nipples. Edrick grabbed one and twisted it hard. Celes gasped with the pain, then she ground her teeth. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of making her scream. Her back scraped against the stone wall through her cloak as she tried to squirm away from Edrick's twisting grip, but his pinning arm was like steel.

"Sometimes you have to show them who's in charge. Especially these high-and-mighty officer-types."

Celes forced her eyes to focus through the dizziness that Edrick's slap had caused. He was speaking aside to Jory, whose eyes were fixed on the pale flesh of Celes's revealed breasts and the rose-pink nipple that Edrick was twisting between his thumb and forefinger. Celes pulled her head back and tried to headbutt Edrick again, but he was either warned by the motion or prepared for it this time, and Celes's forehead only caught him in the shoulder.

Without a word, Edrick released her nipple and sunk his fist into her stomach.

Celes's abrupt inability to breathe was almost as distressing as the brush of his work-roughened hand pulling aside the crotch of her leotard. She struggled to squirm away from the wall, to fight, but Edrick wrapped one of his big hands around her throat and held her there. Blonde strands of her own torn hair dangled from his fingers, tickling on Celes's breasts.

"No!" Celes's protest was more a gasp than a yell, and the corporal ignored it. He rubbed his callused fingers a few times across Celes's folds, and when she tried to push her legs tighter together, he forced them apart with one of his knees.

"Dry as a bone. Let's warm you up."

Celes jerked, but Edrick tightened his grip on the throat. Celes could barely gasp when the soldier forced a dry, rough finger into her tunnel and started working it roughly in and out. It burned, and Celes fruitlessly strained to close her legs. After a few moments of the unwelcome fingering, Celes's body, without her permission, started to provide a little moisture.

Edrick grinned aside at Jory, who was watching with wide eyes as his superior raped Celes with his finger. "She's getting wet, Jory. Means she wants it. They always do."

Celes shook her head, only choking herself even more. Her head was staring to buzz and her mind retreated from her body. She barely noticed when Edrick forced a second finger into her, stretching her as he pumped them both inside her tight channel. Desperate for breath, Celes's body bucked and fought until Edrick realized her struggle wasn't only against his rough fingering.

"Whoops." His voice echoed into Celes's mind as if from far away, and she felt his fingers pull out of her, leaving her empty. "Don't want her to pass out." 

The pressure let off Celes's throat and she panted for air. Before she could slide down the wall to try to get away, Edrick had repositioned his choking hand to the top of her chest. At least when his knee slid out from between her legs, Celes had the presence of mind to lock her ankles together. 

Her vision came back into focus, and Celes saw that Edrick had reached into his Imperial-issue trousers and pulled out a short, thick cock. It already looked hard, but he was staring at her heaving breasts while he giving it a few strokes.

Jory had edged even closer. Through her half-lidded eyes, Celes saw him extend a bare hand to caress her breast. She groaned a little when the young man rubbed his fingertips over her pebble-hard nipple.

"See?" Edrick grunted. He flicked his fingertips over the head of his cock, smearing a little precum around. "She's into it. They just can't tell you they want to be fucked, or they look like sluts. But they want it."

Edrick eyed the tight knot of Celes's ankles and fisted himself. "Grab a boot after I part those fine legs."

Celes's legs were strong, but Edrick ground the heel of his boot between her calves until he had the leverage to force her ankles apart. The second they parted, she felt the cadet grab one of them and haul her leg up and to the side, leaving her pussy horribly exposed.

Edrick pressed his chest against Celes, moving his hand away and trusting his weight to keep her pinned. He roughly pulled her leotard further aside, the loss of slack chafing the fabric deep into the crack of her ass. Even with her hands bound and one of her legs held, Celes struggled against the assault. She struggled harder when felt the hot head of Edrick's cock brushing against her folds. She jerked her hips from side to side, trying to buck him off, headbutt him, bite him, all with no effect.

When Edrick's pressing cock found her entrance, he forced himself into Celes with a hard thrust. 

"Ngaah!" Celes couldn't help herself--she screamed a breathless, high-pitched yelp of pain and surprise. The thick cock burned in her unprepared tunnel, and her body struggled to accomodate his girth. She could feel Jory's fingers moving on the undersides of her smooth thighs, stroking her straining, quivering muscles as his superior raped her.

"Fuck," Edrick moaned near Celes's ear. "Fuck, Jory, you're going to love her. She's so tight, it's like she's milking my cock." 

Celes squirmed and twisted, trying to get away or least relieve the pain, and she could feel Edrick's hard length sliding inside her in response, growing even harder and thicker as her walls moved against him with her futile attempts to free herself. She knew logically that her struggling was only encouraging him, she could hear Edrick's small grunts of pleasure as she twisted. She finally forced her body to still and tried to get her breath back in rasping pants.

That was when Edrick began to fuck her in earnest.

Edrick set a brutal pace. He pulled his cock almost all the way out, only to slam deep into Celes again, lifting her onto her toes with the force of his thrusts. Her back scraped against the stone wall on her way up and down, and her breasts jiggled every time the heavy soldier rutted into her. Jory loosened his grip on Celes's leg to play with a bouncing tit, but there was nothing she could do to fight against Edrick now even if she could twist her ankle out of Jory's loosened grasp.

Edrick grunted each time he filled Celes, and the pained little gasps that she couldn't keep to herself provided a counterpoint. After several hard strokes, the burning eased, Celes's tunnel stretching and providing lubrication. To add insult to injury, the hard thrusts jammed Edrick's pubic bone against her clit, providing disturbing shocks of pleasure in the midst of the hard, unwanted rutting.

Celes didn't keep track of how many times Edrick fucked into her. It was a long time. By the time his pace grew ragged, Celes's back was scraped raw through her cloak and she could barely feel her legs, though she could still feel every punishing thrust shake her core.

"Shit," Edrick gasped. "I'm going to come."

Despite how numb Celes was becoming to her situation, his words caused a flare of fear and panick. It wasn't a safe time! The rational part of Celes knew that it wouldn't matter, that she would be executed the next day. But the thought of growing her rapist's child inside her layered new horror in her mind. She struggled anew, but Edrick didn't even seem to notice her weak twists.

Celes hadn't known it was possible for Edrick to thrust harder, but he did. The big man brutally filled her four or five more times before he hilted deep into Celes and rocked his hips. "Fuuuuuuck!"

His cock pulsed. The cum burned against Celes's ravaged walls, and she thought she could feel it splash against her cervix. Tears stung in her eyes, but she wouldn't let them fall. Already softening, Edrick pulled out of Celes with a wet noise. Without his weight pinning her against the wall, and with her legs shocked and shaky from her ordeal, Celes collapsed to the hard floor. She barely managed not to slam her face into it, and her nipples spiked fresh pain as they scraped on the rough stone. 

She heard Edrick clap his hand on the cadet's shoulder. "Broken in and ready for you, my friend."

Celes felt a trickle of spent cum slide out of her and roll forward across her folds, but it was as if it were happening to someone else, someone far away.

"I'm not sure...." Jory's voice quavered with uncertainty.

Edrick chuckled. "Yeah you are, I see that tent in your pants. I tell you, there's nothing wrong with wanting to fuck a willing hole."

"Willing?" Jory sounded incredulous. 

"Yeah. Look at her pussy all red, legs open. That only happens when they want it."

Celes struggled to shift her legs closed.

"She's squirming for it." Edrick coaxed the cadet. "Look, if you don't want a used hole, she's already half turned over."

Not that! Celes struggled over onto her back. Edrick and Jory looked down at her, the older corporal's eyes viciously pleased and the younger cadet eager and uncertain. Celes saw the bulge in Jory's pants, though, and she knew Edrick would win out. 

Edrick nudged Jory with his elbow. "Look at her. Nipples standing up, presenting her pussy at you. She wants to be fucked."

Jory licked his lips in a nervous gesture. "Yeah, I guess so."

Edrick nudged the young man on the shoulder. "Get to it, then." He sauntered over to the chair and slumped into it to watch.

Jory dropped to his knees between Celes's legs, spreading them farther with his hands. One hand lingered on the inside of her creamy thigh as the other fished his cock out of his trousers. Jory's cock was thinner than Edrick's had been, but longer, and it seemed to leap eagerly away from the fabric of his pants.

Jory's hand shook with eagerness as he started to lower himself over Celes. She turned her head and looked away from his earnest face.

Jory's thinner cock slipped easily into Celes's wet, abused tunnel, squelching in Edrick's spent seed. The young cadet didn't seem to mind. He gasped and pressed into Celes so eagerly that she was surprised this was his first rape.

"So warm," Jory mumbled into Celes's hair. With his now-free hand, he awkwardly groped one of her breasts, prompting a pained gasp when his palm brushed her chafed nipple. 

"Hear that?" Edrick encouraged from the chair, his hard eyes glittering. "She likes that. Fuck her like she wants, kid."

Jory moaned as he pulled out, then he thrust his full length into Celes. Her abused tunnel had been stretched by Edrick, but Jory was longer. The abrupt cramp as he bottomed out against her cervix caused Celes to bite down on a sob of pain. Her entire body convulsed, and to her horror, she felt her vagina squeeze Jory's cock.

He moaned again. "She... fuck... she does like it...."

"Pound her like the slut she is!"

Fortunately for Celes, the cadet didn't have Edrick's stamina. After only two more thrusts, Jory groaned and emptied his load into her. Judging by the prolonged cramping, the soldier had probably pumped his seed directly into her fertile womb.  
Jory lay on top off Celes for a few moments, gasping and trembling as his cock continued to twitch inside her. Finally, with a shuddering breath and a wet noise, he pulled out.

Edrick smirked knowingly. "That was good, yeah?" 

"Yeah," Jory agreed breathlessly.

Celes saw Edrick stroke himself through his pants. He leered at Celes but spoke to Jory. "Wait until you have her ass. It'll be even tighter."

Celes's gut twisted.

**Thud thud thud.** Someone pounded on the door, and the soldiers jumped.

Jory hurriedly fumbled his softening cock away, and Edrick straighted on the chair, pulling his gloves back on. "Toss me the key," he said in a quiet voice, "and get her decent."

Jory tossed Edrick the key and bent over Celes. He moved her leotard back into place over her puffy, abused sex. The pressure of the cloth hurt, and knowing that it could be pulled aside at any time, it brought Celes no comfort. Jory hauled her into a sitting position, jerked her leotard top up over her chafed nipples, and pulled her dirtied cloak around her shoulders.

She heard a key in the lock, then Edrick spoke. "Sir!"

"We're here to relieve you on watch." It was a new, unfamiliar voice.

"Yes sir!" Edrick's response was crisp. The sound of his voice made Celes flinch. Jory stepped away from Celes and straightened.

The new watch, a dark-faced sergeant and a different cadet, both stared at Celes. 

"What happened to her face?" asked the sergeant. 

"She's got a mouth on her," Edrick said. Jory nodded along.

The sergeant grunted. "Well, it's our problem now. Report upstairs, both of you. You're on patrol."

As soon as the rapists were out of sight, Celes sank against her dirty cloak, shaking with exhaustion and trying to ignore the feeling of cum oozing out of her and into her leotard. She made herself take a breath and forced words out. "They raped me."

The sergeant took a step closer, and Celes forced her back to straighten. His features twisted into a smirk. "That's what happens to traitors!" He actually chuckled. "So. The the mighty Celes has fallen."

Pride stung Celes, and she lifted her chin. "Not as far as those who would use their strength to oppress the weak."

"Quiet!" The sergeant drew his hand back as if to strike Celes, and she flinched and pressed her lips tightly together. The sergeant looked to the cadet. "Are you able to stand watch?"

The cadet snapped to attention. "Yes sir! I can go for days without sleep!"

The sergeant nodded curtly and left. Celes flinched when the cadet moved, but he only lowered himself onto the chair with a sigh of relief.

Despite her attempt at wariness, Celes's abused body demanded rest. She slumped into her cloak, her sore sex protesting every movement, and somehow sleep managed to ambush her.

* * *

When a wiry man woke Celes by putting a hand over her mouth, it prevented her from screaming. She was deeply ashamed at the spike of fear and anxiety that made her limbs tremble. But instead of abusing her, the man cut her bindings and whispered in her ear. "Let's get going."

Celes didn't recognize the man, whose light-brown hair was bound back with a banana. She jerked her head away from his touch. She could see that the guard was asleep in the chair, not dead, so she kept her voice down. "You'd take me with you? Do you know who I am?"

"You're General Celes. And I'm Locke, with the Returners. Do you think you can walk?"

Celes hated how her legs shook as she got them under her, how voice quavered even at a whisper. "I can barely walk. We'll never make it out of here alive."

"I'll protect you," he said. Celes drew in a breath to protest that she didn't need his protection, but the young man winked. "Trust me, you'll be fine."

That could have so many meanings. Celes badly wanted to believe that she could be fine.

Locke offered Celes a hand up, but she ignored it and pressed herself slowly to her feet. Even though she tottered, she followed Locke out of the cell under her own power.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Celes has another misadventure when the Returners decide to have her imitate a famous opera star who is about to be abducted by a notorious airship captain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing super dark to see here, just some setup for more darkness. As always, I don't support rape/kidnapping/pretty much any of this IRL, I've just got some twisted fantasies. Sorry not sorry.

Celes had been apprehensive when the Returners planned for her to imitate the famous opera star, Maria, in an attempt to lure in a man with an airship who had threatened to kidnap and marry Maria. It seemed like a huge gamble. But everyone agreed that her round features, blue eyes, and long blonde hair made her the spitting image of Maria. Besides, Celes and her friends desperately needed an airship to get to Vector, to stop the Empire.  
  
So Celes dressed up in Maria's elaborate beige gown and tied her hair back with a ribbon. She studied the opera's score and learned the songs. Her time on front of the audience was a blur. If anyone noticed that her voice wasn't as strong or practiced as the true star's, they were professional enough not to cat call.  
  
Celes's heart pounded at the end of the first act. She looked to the balcony where her friends were supposed to be seated, not admitting to herself that she was looking for one face in particular. But Locke wasn't there. In fact, none of her friends seemed to be in the balcony seating area.  
  
Anxiety tightened Celes's chest. Where were they?  
  
She had no more time than that to wonder. A heavy rope thudded down from above, causing Celes to flinch to the side and look up.  
  
One of the opera house's skylights had been removed, and a huge ship held aloft by a massive balloon blocked out the sun. It was one thing to desire one, and another to be reminded of how huge an airship actually was. Her friends must be on the roof, preparing to board while the owner was distracted by his plans.  
  
Celes was distracted, too. So distracted by the huge ship and her own worries that she didn't see the form rappelling down it until he was nearly on top of her. Black trenchcoat flapping, Setzer landed on the stage with a thud of his boots, drawing a gasp from the crowd.  
  
He was a striking man, with long silver hair pulled back in a tail and eyes that shone an intense violet in the stage lighting. Deep scars marred his forehead and his chin, preventing him from being truly attractive. When he wrapped one of his gloved hands around Celes's arm, she had to remind herself that getting abducted was part of the plan. Words to call magic danced on her tongue, but she swallowed them and did her best to pretend to be a frightened opera star instead of a military leader and magic-user.  
  
Setzer announced to the raptly silent audience, "I'm a man of my word. I'm taking Maria!"  
  
He bent to wrap an arm around Celes's waist and lifted her over a shoulder. Apprehension flooded Celes's stomach and she found herself kicking her legs against Setzer's grip. He murmured, "Don't struggle. It will be a shame if such a beauty as you falls from a great height."  
  
Setzer yanked hard on the rope and it started to lift them into the air. Setzer clung to it with one hand where it was hooked through some sort of tackle at his waist, and the other strong arm gripped Celes tight. She had no other choice than to cling to Setzer, her only lifeline, as the rope pulled them steadily into the sky toward the looming belly of the airship. Her heart pounded with anxiety when she realized that the rope was ascending and her friends were nowhere to be seen. Locke had been so sure that Setzer would either land the ship or anchor it to something, giving them something to climb up, but as she was lifted, Celes saw nothing of the sort.  
  
What she did see froze her heart. In the rafters of the opera house, her friends were engaged in some sort of battle. She couldn't make out the details, but she could hear the repetitive thuds of Edgar's auto-crossbow and the other unmistakable sounds of fighting as she was lifted away into the night.  
  
This plan had been a gamble, but it seemed as though their luck had run out.  
  


* * *

After the line pulled them into the hold of the airship, Setzer dangled for a few moments while his crew rushed around securing the cargo bay doors. It left Celes painfully aware that she was dangling at least sixty feet above the nearest surface in a grip that, while strong, was only a grip. She remained as still as possible, clutching the back of Setzer's black coat.

When the doors below were closed and bolted, Setzer finally let his boots rest on the metal surface and unclipped his harness. "Set a course that puts us over the ocean," he instructed one of the rushing crew. The woman nodded and darted off.

Without the sight of the ground to intimidate her, Celes twisted in Setzer's grip. "Put me down!"

"Not yet, darling." Setzer gave Celes's bottom a pat. "I want to carry you over the threshold."

Celes had a great deal of marital training, most of it focused on how to avoid being in such a disadvantaged position. The corset of the beige dress was almost as binding as the skirts that weighed on her legs all the way down to her ineffectual slippers. She leaned as far as she could and pounded with her fists on her abductor's back, trying to get a solid hit on his kidney, but his thick coat deflected and dispersed the force of her blows.

Setzer loosed a mildly annoyed hmph. "Now, now. None of that. I will not be bruised on my wedding night."

Bruised? Celes was going to freeze him with ice, scorch him with fire. As soon as she had her feet under her and could get her hands into position to target her spells, he would learn why it's a bad idea to abduct women you don't know.

She conserved her energy as Setzer carried her through a massive room, where the airship's machinery clunked and ground, and up sets of rickety-looking stairs. A crew member looked up from scrubbing oil off a machine part as they approached, then ran ahead on the catwalk to haul open the next door. Setzer lugged her through like so much booty.

Celes squinted in the sudden wash of light. Huge windows, their fancy cream draperies open, overlooked the night-dark landscape passing far below the ship. The lounge was lit by bright electric lanterns, and it was set up like a high-end gambling den. A felted blackjack table with polished wooden chairs sat with its accoutrements in a clasped wooden case. Opposite it was a massive roulette table, no ball yet resting in its slots. Overstuffed, royal purple couches and chairs lined the walls, except for the presence of a bar to one side, which seemed at a glance to be fully stocked.

Setzer deposited Celes on one of the couches and frowned at her, the expression pulling his scar awry. "Who are you? You are not Maria."

Plans to call magic lingered in the front of Celes's mind, but she kept her fingers still for now. The man didn't seem inclined to do her harm. Celes mind leaped as it was trained to, putting together tiny pieces of information and forming a strategy at lightning-fast speed.

"Setzer," she said. The man's brows rose at the use of his name. "The Returners need your help. We have to go to Vector. We need this ship to get there."

Setzer's lips pursed. "As you aren't Maria, I do not want you on my ship."

He turned and beckoned. A burly member of the crew stepped out of the shadows from behind the bar. Celes shot to her feet, magic tingling in her fingertips. "Wait!"

Setzer paused, the slight turn of his shoulder showing that he was giving Celes at least some attention.

From the reports, Celes knew that Setzer was a vain man. Everything from his expensive coat to his fine, soft sueded boots screamed that he was trying to impress someone. "We were told your ship is the finest vessel in the world."

Setzer gestured with his hand as if to say that Celes was stating the obvious. But the gesture also stopped the advancing sailor.

Celes tried to work out to lead Setzer to where she wanted to go. "And that you were the world's most notorious gambler."

Setzer smirked and turned to face Celes fully. "Past tense?"

She would try diplomacy first. "Many towns and villages have been smashed by the Empire--"

Setzer made a dismissive noise. "The Empire has made me a rich man. Though lonely." Setzer eyed Celes like men had been eyeing her all her life. Her bust, her fine waist, her heart-shaped face with its fine bone structure. 

"You know. You are even more stunning than Maria." Setzer's voice was contemplative. Celes lifted her chin and prepared to deflect an advance with a surge of fire. But her hand bumped against a weight in her pocket on the way up, giving her a different idea. She displayed herself, not pretending to be meek, but taking a deep breath to fill her chest, dropping her shoulders down and back, cocking one of her hips forward. Trying to entice him like a pot of honey, even though it was the last thing she wanted to do.

Setzer turned to fully face Celes, eyeing her like a choice piece of meat. "I will help you friends. If you become my wife."

Celes almost laughed at how predictable men were.

She dropped her hand to the pocket she could reach through a slit in the dress, where Edgar's double-sided coin provided a reassuring weight. "I have a condition."

Setzer's mellow voice was amused. "You aren't in a position to make demands."

Celes pretended that he hadn't spoke. "We must settle it with a coin toss. Heads, you agree to help us, free of charge. Tails, and I set aside my vengeance and become your wife."

"Done."

Celes lifted the double-headed gil from her pocket and flicked it high into the air.

Both Celes's blue eyes and Setzer's purple followed the coin as it tumbled in the air. It clattered to the finely polished wooden flooring of the deck, the emperor's crest face-up.

"Heads," Setzer announced, no emotion in his voice.

Quickly, Celes stepped forward and stooped to retrieve the coin. "So you will help us?"

"That was the deal." With his voice stripped of swagger, Setzer's tone was hard to read. Disappointment? Well, it served him right, trying to kidnap a woman to force her hand in marriage.

Setzer turned to the lurking sailor and made a complicated gesture. "Have them turn the ship."

"Aye aye, Captain." Engine noise swamped the gambling lounge as the sailor passed through the door to the engine room.

Setzer's eyes returned to linger on Celes. "As for you...."

"Celes," she supplied.

Setzer's smile was thin-lipped. "A familiar name. As for you, General Celes. Would you care for a drink, while we wait?" He offered her his arm gallantly.

Celes glanced to the bar, hesitated. "I don't normally drink."

"And I don't normally offer my services for free. Sharing a drink is the least you can do."

He had a point. She had basically cheated him out of an airship. One drink was the least she could do. She demurred, "A dry red, if you have it."

Setzer let Celes take her choice of the high chairs as he clattered behind the bar. The uniformed crew member watched impassively while his captain invaded his space. Setzer's refined hands worked below the bar, then he set up two glasses, uncorked a bottle, and poured. He offered Celes one of them as he came back around the bar.

Celes took it and lifted it to her nose. It had a dry, spicy aroma, with a fruity undertone she couldn't recognize. "Marandan?"

"Indeed." Setzer lifted his glass. "To our partnership."

Celes lifted hers back and took a sip. The wine burst dry and tart across her tongue. Delicious.

They sat sipping wine in silence. Celes wondered about her friends. Who had the other Returners been battling? Would they get back in time to help? If Setzer had any thoughts, he didn't press them toward her. Silently together, they drained their glasses.

At first, Celes thought the sway was from the ship coming to a stop. A single glass of wine would buzz her a little, but it shouldn't give her the spins. Despite that, the wineglass tipped in Celes's fingers and the world began to tilt slowly. It was increasingly hard to keep her head up. "What did... is this...."

"I drugged the glass." Setzer answered the question Celes couldn't quite form. He leaned forward and captured Celes's hand in his. She tried to yank it away, but it was so hard for her mind to communicate with her body.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Setzer lets Celes in on his plans and motivations, and make Celes an offer she can't refuse.

Celes struggled against Setzer's iron grip, trying to smash him in the face with the glass he had drugged. But there was no strength in her arm. "You drugged me? You cheating bastard."

Not even her curse came out as forcefully as she would have liked, the words blurring at the edges. 

Setzer took Celes's glass like an adult might take a child's toy. "Now, now," he chided her gently. "It may be a small bit of cheating, to make the bride more tractable on her wedding night, but it is no worse than what you tried to pull over on me by trying to steal my fine and comfortable life with false pretenses. How low can you get?"

"What?" It was difficult for Celes to force words past the warm cotton blanket that had descended on her mind.

One of Setzer's slim-fingered, gloved hands slipped into Celes's pocket and pulled out the double-headed coin. He held it before her, turning it from side to side so that the twinned heads glittered in the light of the electric lanterns. "Clever in the attempt. But not smart in the execution."

Danger, her brain screamed from its dark corner, finally catching up to what Setzer had said a few moments before. About a bride. She tried to find the words in her increasingly dizzy, fuzzy mind. "I'm leaving."

Celes wasn't quite sure where she intended to leave to. She started to force herself up despite the dizziness, swayed dangerously when she was half-way to her feet. 

Setzer grabbed Celes's arm gently, and when he spoke, and it was like the words echoed deep into her mind. "Sit back down."

Celes didn't want to sit. She wanted to stand and make her escape somehow, despite knowing that the ship was in flight, but instead she felt the chair's cushion give under her weight again. Setzer continued to hold her arm, the smooth silk of his gloves warm on her skin. His fingertips caressed her sensitive underarm in a way that made the bottom drop out of her stomach.

She couldn't bear to look at him, the way he was looking at her with that mix of hunger and smug satisfaction in his eyes. She looked at the darkened windows instead.

Setzer's tone was gentle, self-assured. "The drug will also make you quite tractable. Your former employers use the potion to prepare their more intransigent assets to receive the slave crown. I had hoped Maria would be willing, of course, but it is best to plan for the worst while hoping for the best."

Celes slowly shook her head. She tried to form her thoughts into an action like calling magick to burn him or freeze him, or at least running away, getting free, any sort of action, but they slipped away from her mind like sand falling between fingers.

"Maria looked so much like my Darill, you see." Setzer's stroking fingertips continued to warm the underside of Celes's arm, causing her breath to catch oddly. Or was that the drug warming her. "Darill's hair, the shape of her face. Your face. Both your eyes are wrong, hers were green."

The stroking of his fingertips stopped, the warm glove lifted. Celes was relieved, but then it returned, grasping her chin and turning it toward him. Nothing in Celes could connect her desire to resist with any action of her muscles. It was a sickeningly powerless feeling. 

"But you, my dear, have more of Darill's spirit. I can see it in your face, the way you are frowning at me with your eyes. It is fine, I have decided, that your eyes are the wrong color."

Celes dragged together her scattered thoughts, shoved them into words. "And how does Darill feel about you kidnapping and drugging women?"

Setzer's face turned to stone before Celes's eyes. One moment, he was conversational, smug. The next, he was a marble statue with amethyst eyes closed to all emotion. Even the hand cupping her face seemed to lose some of its warmth. "She feels nothing anymore."

Celes breathed out. She didn't want to feel sorry for this man and his dead sweetheart. She refused to. His intentions were purely evil.

Setzer's face returned to life, his fingertips brushed the strong line of Celes's jaw. "Here is my offer, Celes. You will join me as my wife. We will fly together, for adventure, for fun, to further enrich the family and legacy we shall have together. You will want for nothing. And if you do not wish to aid the Empire, I shall simply withdraw my support, and we shall become purely mercantile, you and I. Finding great treasures and selling them to the highest bidder."

Celes was not the least bit tempted, not even before he mentioned treasure-hunting. Locke. Her roguish treasure-hunter with his gentle, protective ways. She was in love with him. Their weeks on the run had cemented the bond that started the moment he had freed her, but the more painful memories of her imprisonment in South Figaro shoved their way forward whenever she tried to make a move. From his eyes, she knew he felt the same, and he was willing to wait for her to be ready.

Locke would come for her, he was perhaps even scaling the outside of the ship to help her fight this egotistical madman right now.

"No," she said.

Setzer's hard face disappeared, replaced by a mockingly sad smile. "A shame." He withdrew his hand from Celes's face, and relief pooled in her stomach.

Setzer turned his head and lifted his hand, as if to get someone's attention, and then spoke to the impassive sailor just out of sight. "Rouse the registrar, I believe he is pickling in vodka in one of the guest chambers."

Celes slowly shook her head. She couldn't make her legs work, but she found that she could lift her hand, try to push him away. "I said no. I will not marry you."

Her shaky-armed push was as ineffectual as a child's. Setzer simply grasped Celes's hand and brought it up to her lips, kissing her palm. "My darling Celes. It is not an offer I shall allow you to refuse."

As the servant disappeared, Celes found words in her haze. "But a registrar won't solemnize... if it's not voluntary...."

Setzer gave her palm a second kiss, slow and sensuous in a way that warmed the area between Celes's thighs. "Don't you worry about that. This one owes me a great debt. I'm sure he'll overlook any lack of willingness on your part now, in exchange for my willingness in the future not to have him thrown in debtor's prison."

Dread replaced the relief in Celes's stomach, and while she tried to pull her hand away from the brush of Setzer's warm, soft lips across the sword-callused skin of her palm, she could no more do that than escape entirely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't say I didn't warn you that Setzer was going to be an actual bad boy instead of just some guy who plays one on TV. The next chapter is about half-written and it's going to be dark.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drugged and in Setzer's power, Celes is forced to submit to a marriage she doesn't want.

The next hour passed in a haze that seemed to float around Celes instead of involving her. The registrar came in and asked some questions. He was a thin, white-haired man with a nervous fidget who slurred and smelled strongly of spirits. Setzer responded to most of the perfunctory questions, but Celes refused to answer with the names of her parents when asked, no matter how commanding Setzer became. And to whether the wife consented, Celes responded, "No!" But Setzer said, "Yes," and the registrar pretended not to hear her. 

Before long, the he stamped a paper and announced them man and wife.

Setzer leaned across the space to shake the man's hand. "Do return to enjoying the hospitality of the gambling deck, my good man. My crew enjoys playing cards."

The registrar slurred something that didn't stick in Celes's brain. What did stick was Setzer, who was standing now, leaning to offer his hand. "Stand, darling. Come with me."

Against her will, Celes rose on wobbly legs and struggled not to lean against her new husband as he led her through the ship.

***

The captain's cabin was cozy, a relatively small space decorated in blue velvet, with a thick cream-colored rug to match its closed drapes. Setzer closed the door behind them, leading Celes to the side of a crisp-sheeted bed that took up most of the space.

"Stay."

Setzer turned to the wardrobe, peeled off his gloves, shucked his jacket, and started loosening his cuffs. Celes's body continued to ignore her commands to lift her hands, work her magic, or at least brain him with one of the ridiculous canes from a rack of them. The best she could do was twitch her hands open and closed and imagine how he would look sprawled on the thick carpet, blood seeping into his silver hair.

Setzer turned back to Celes. His pale blue eyes surveyed her body.

Her heart seized with dread. She knew what was coming next, what had come next the last time a man looked at her like that when she was helpless in his power. At least that time, she had been able to resist. Now, she tried to gather herself to fight, but the potion made her muscles lax and jumbled the words of her magic in her mind.

"Take off your dress, darling."

Celes's fought the command with every inch of her being, but her traitorous hands rose from her sides and started fumbling the tight laces on the cuffs of her sleeves.

Setzer made no move to help as her numb fingers fumbled through the knots. Instead, he watched every moment as he slowly unbuttoned his dress shirt and hung it in the wardrobe. Beneath the voluminous clothing, it turned out that he was a thin man, pale-skinned and heavily scarred. Not the sort Celes would normally go for. He had none of Locke's warm hue or wiry, reassuring musculature.

Celes's sleeves were loose. Of their own accord, her hands untied the dress's wide blue sash, then started to work on the laces at the nape of her neck. A thought came to mind, to at least attempt to shame him out of what he intended to do  
She put as much vehemence in her voice as she could. "I can't believe you're going to rape me."

Setzer's lips pressed tight. He lifted one booted foot onto a low stand by the wardrobe to unlace it. "Rape?" His tone was thick with distaste. "This is no rape, Celes. You are my wife."

"Without my consent," she insisted past her fuzzy lips. As much as she tried to slow her hands, the dress was loosening and starting to slip down her shoulders off the white chemise underneath. "The law requires consent to marriage."

Setzer lined his boots up precisely. When he spoke, his voice was smooth again, self-assured. "You would have cheated me. Who are you, to lecture me about cheating the empire's law?"

Celes's dress slipped off and puddled around her ankles. Free of their task, her fingers stilled, and she stood there shivering in her thin cotton chemise and beige slippers. 

In only his fine black pants, which were tenting with arousal in the front, Setzer stepped to Celes. Face to face, he lightly brushed his fine fingertips down Celes's arm, bare below the chemise's thin straps. Bumps rose on her skin, and even though nausea twisted her stomach, she felt a pang from her loins.

Setzer leaned in to speak close to her ear, even though his body didn't touch hers. "There can be no rape between a man and his wife. Each owes the other the necessary duties to create children."

Celes shivered at the warmth of his breath on her ear, the warmth from his skin that didn't quite touch hers. She felt as much as heard Setzer smile. Celes tried to back away, but Setzer said again, "Stay." Her legs refused to move.

Still touching her arm, the barest brush of fingertips up the sensitive underside toward her shoulder, Setzer slipped around behind Celes. His fingertips whispered across the nape of her neck raised more bumps, and there again came warmth on her ear. "Besides which, you will want this."

"I don't," Celes mumbled even as she shivered. And it was true. A caged animal clawed and snarled in her mind, tamed only by the drug.

Celes had been raped before, but not like this. Her rape as a prisoner of the empire had been a violent thing, a beating and a hard fucking. This was closer to what she had shared with her teenage lover before the genetic enhancements that made her a magitek knight. Setzer's gentle teasing was starting to spike her heartrate in the same way. She could feel her face heating. But that had been awkward but desired, innocent. This was purposeful and sinister.

Setzer lifted a hand to move her head by the chin, pointing her face at the mirror that stood on the inside of the wardrobe's open door, taking up almost the entire surface. His other hand caressed the curve where Celes's neck met her shoulders. "You do want this. Just look at yourself."

Celes had no choice but to look. She saw a pale young woman with cheeks flushed red with humiliation, trembling with a desire to wound the tall, pale, scarred man behind her. To wipe the smirk off his face and out of his violet eyes. But she could see how someone else might interpret her flush, the way her nipples pressed against the thin shift in the cool room, the way her shivering grew worse when Setzer bent to brush his lips against the back of her neck.

He pressed against her, then, his chest warming her back. The hard length of his cock was a hot weight that stabbed the small of her back through the thin layers of her chemise and his fine pants. Both of his arms wrapped her, his delicate, long-fingered hands cupping her breasts. When his thumbs brushed her erect nipples, Celes shuddered involuntarily at the heat current that shot straight to her core. "See? You want this," Setzer whispered into her hair.

"I don't," Celes insisted, words blurred with the drug.

"Your body doesn't lie." Setzer's toyed with and tweaked Celes's nipples, rubbing cloth against the sensitive nubs, pulling them into peaks, each sensation provoking a gasp or a shiver. When he used one hand to bunch up the lower edge of her short shift, Celes stiffened.

"It does lie," she said. Not that he listened.

Setzer's fingertips brushed feather-light over her mound on their way lower. She gasped when they pressed against the more delicate lips of her pussy, gathering the moisture that slicked her despite the howling from her furious brain. When he slid his two slick fingertips to her buzzing clit and rubbed them in a slow circle, a low moan tore out of Celes.

"No. It does not." Setzer mumbled into her hair. Celes felt him rocking against her back, rubbing his hard cock against the thin material of her chemise, where it still drooped down to cover her ass. It stuck a little from his own wetness, but he didn't seem to mind.

Setzer continued to rub slick fingers over Celes's clit while he humped her. His other hand toyed with her nipples, first one, then the other, every brush or pinch stoking the fire inside her. Every now and then his fingers grew sticky, then delved into her slit to come up wet. Tension coiled low in Celes's stomach, and she fought against it. Her body craved those fingers inside her, but her mind didn't want that at all. She kept her legs as tightly clamped as the drug let her.

Her hips bucked involuntarily the next time Setzer's fingers circled her hard, throbbing clit, and a needy gasp broke free from her control. She pressed back against him. She didn't mean to hump back against his cock, didn't mean to shudder or let her tightly held thighs loosen a little.

Setzer's fingers slid into her tunnel and stroked that delicious place on her inner walls. Celes moaned, unable to help herself as her pussy clenched around the gambler's nimble fingers. Aroused. Hating herself. Humiliated that her body would betray her like this.

"Ah," Setzer breathed out on a pleased hum, continuing to stroke her velvety cunt with his violating fingers. "You're ready."

Celes wasn't ready, would never be ready, no matter what her body was doing without her will. Despite the loggy pull of whatever he had drugged her with, when he nudged her toward the bed with a press of his cock, she stiffened and tried to resist.

"Relax," he whispered in her ear. And her traitorous body did, sagging back against him with all her muscles gone slack.

Setzer arranged her as it suited him, as if she were a doll to pose. He turned her toward the bed and nudged her onto it. He spread her legs and bent her knees to the bed, then pressed her forward face into the covers. Though her clit throbbed for attention and her wet cunt was growing cold, she wished they would stay that way forever. She tried to push up or get away, but her arms were jelly.

After Setzer ran his fingers through her hair, he turned her head so that she was facing the mirror. She watched him unbutton his pants and slide them off. His cock sprung up eagerly. Long, thin, pale as the rest of him, its head glistened with precum. Iit twitched in anticipation as Setzer lifted her hips and presented her pussy. 

He brushed her chemise up her back and rubbed his hands over Celes's round ass, then gripped her hips. "Wide, childbearing hips," he said. "I cannot wait until your stomach swells with our first child, my stunning wife."

An ill sensation rocked Celes's stomach, she saw the dread and disgust on her face in the mirror. Oblivious or simply uncaring, Setzer slid the hot head of his cock between her folds, slicking himself up with her juices without penetrating her. Celes was ashamed at the thrill of heat that sent through her, how she was sopping wet as if she did actually want this.

Setzer's fingers tightened on Celes's hips, holding her in place as he pressed forward, his cock slowly stretching her open, molding her around him. He barely pressed in before he withdrew again, his own breathing getting rough. From his little groan, the control cost him. The stretching of her inner walls didn't hurt at all. Her body was ready for him, even though her mind raged and screamed at the violation. The command to relax echoed in Celes's mind, so that she couldn't even tighten her walls to push him out.

He thrust a little deeper, retreated. A little deeper still, another retreat. Wet arousal tickled down the inside of Celes's thigh, as involuntary as the tears that trickled out of the corners of her eyes.

It felt like hours before Setzer's cock was fully sheathed inside Celes, his heavy balls bumping her mound. He wasn't angled to bottom out against her cervix, and he was thick enough to stretch and fill her, but not so thick that it was painful. As Setzer pulled out to slowly rut back into her, the only pain was in Celes's mind. She felt betrayed by her body, which was singing while Setzer's cock stroked her insides. As if this was right, as if this was how her body was meant to be used. She hated it. 

She could deny him her orgasm, at least she had that. Celes slammed her mind with every distracting, unsexy thought: war-burned villages, starving children, dead infants, even though she couldn't help her occasional gasp or shiver when he stroked her tunnel just right. She would hold out until he came. She would.

But Setzer didn't come. After a long period of slow, rhythmic violation, Setzer sighed. "I had hoped you would give in. But I suppose it is a good thing for out children-to-be, that their mother is so strong and stubborn."

"I won't. So just get it over with." Celes doubted he intended to stop raping her, but at least he might finish and leave her to gather herself.

Instead, Setzer shifted Celes's forward on the bed and joined her there, pressed his weight against her back. "There is a better chance for conception if you orgasm, my darling," Setzer spoke against Celes's back. 

His fingers slid forward, brushed her aching clitoris, and settled into an undeniable rhythmic tug. In time with his short thrusts, it made her pussy's walls sing, want to clamp down around his cock, milk it.

"No!" She wanted to cry with frustration. But she felt the cresting wave, the way her tunnel began to flutter around Setzer's cock. Celes moaned.

"Yes," he warmly encouraged her.

Celes came. The unwanted release swept up and drowned her, taking her breath away, clenching her tunnel tight around Setzer's steel-hard cock. As her long orgasm continued sweeping through her, Setzer sheathed himself deep inside, rocking in her more than thrusting. Pain burned below the level of her orgasm as Setzer rubbed the sensitive head of his cock directly against her cervix. Then he grunted, and Celes felt the answering shudder of his release. She imagined she could feel the heat of it deep inside her, mingling with her own juices at the entrance to her fertile womb.

Setzer pulled out with a wet noise after he finished, dragging another shudder from Celes. The cool ship's air washed over her inflamed pussy, made a cold trail of the seed dripping down the inside of her thigh. In the mirror, she watched Setzer rise and towel off. Raped, knees splayed open, semen oozing from her slit, Celes could look at herself but she couldn't even lower her ass from the air. Stay. Relax. She wondered bitterly if his seed was rooting inside her already, or if it would take more rapes for Setzer to get his way.

Setzer seemed to notice her predicament after a few moments. His tone warm and solicitous, he said, "You may get comfortable, my wife." 

Celes gasped and rolled onto her side, curling into a ball. Then she asserted hoarsely, "I need to pee." She wanted nothing more than to scoop as much of his jizz out of her sore tunnel as possible. 

"The pot is behind the screen in the corner," Setzer replied. He smiled lazily, watching her in the mirror. "Return to bed after you've finished."

Celes peeled herself off the bed and tottered dizzily to the screen. Setzer's mellow voice followed her. "And Celes. I hope our baby is already forming inside you, but do nothing to impede our child."

Humiliated and furious, Celes staggered behind the screen and slammed it closed against the wall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure when I'll update next, since I kind of want to add more to my Terra/Ultros story line, but I definitely have some ideas about where this will go!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Celes wakes up somewhere unexpected and has breakfast in bed. 
> 
> No, really, just breakfast. For now.

Celes woke slowly. It was so nice, sleeping in a comfortable bed, the mattress softly supportive and the fine sheets smooth on her skin. She could almost imagine Cid bustling around in the kitchen, burning coffee before his shift in the labs. It had been so long since the Returners had slept in a proper inn, she had almost forgotten what a real bed felt like. 

Then the low rumble of engines intruded into her consciousness, and she remembered where she was. Celes gasped and struggled up out of sleep. Normally she woke ready in an instant, but opening her eyes this morning was like fighting uphill in molasses. 

Because she had been drugged, married, raped, maybe made to carry a child against her will. 

Those thoughts dumped enough adrenaline into her system for Celes to open her eyes. She was in a soft down bed with blue covers, the growl of the engines and gentle rocking were a product of the airship in flight. The blue velvet curtains on the window were open, but white lace under-curtains cut the intensity of the light. She was sore, but not nearly as sore as she had been after her guards had assaulted her in her cell. Setzer had been...

Celes realized this was the most clearly she had been able to think since her drink the night before. If he was asleep, it might be her chance to escape.

She had curled away from him in the night, pressed herself as close to the drop off the bed as possible to avoid touching him, turned her back to him. Now, she wished she had at least slept facing him, so that she could see how deeply asleep he was without needing to roll over.

Carefully, slowly, Celes lifted herself and rolled in place to face where she expected to see Setzer sleeping on the bed.

His violet eyes met hers. He was sprawled on his side on top of the covers, though a corner of the sheet kept him decent. She recalled that he had come to bed naked, while she was still in the chemise that had been under Maria's costume dress. He had propped his head up with one hand, his other held a glass goblet with what looked like some sort of citrus juice in it, as if the creepy bastard had been having a morning drink while watching her sleep.

Setzer spoke warmly, almost affectionately. "Good morning, my wife. I thought we might have breakfast in bed to celebrate our nuptials."

"Not a chance," Celes said, and her voice was clearer than it had been since the night before. She started struggling one of her arms out from under the covers. If she could just focus the magic, she'd make a break for it while he was trying to put out the bed fire. He had been able to rappel down into the opera house, so she ought to be able to get down to somewhere, too, if she could make it to the cargo bay.

The moment Celes got her hand free, Setzer pushed the goblet into it, commanding, "Drink."

In response to the direct command, her traitor hand slowly lifted the goblet to her mouth, and she took a swallow. A familiar fruity undertone coated her tongue in the aftertaste of the crisp citrus drink. A minute or two later, as she was finishing the glass, a warm numbness started in her stomach and flowed out into her limbs.

Setzer took the glass from her hand as it sagged in her loosened fingers. He sounded almost apologetic, "As it builds up in your system, we'll lessen the dose. And dispense with it entirely after you've come to love me."

"As if I ever could," Celes mumbled.

Setzer set the glass on a nightstand, then reached toward her and brushed a loose lock of her golden hair behind her ear. "Perhaps not me," he admitted. "But when our children come, you will love them. A mother loves her children. You'll love yours like the mother you didn't know must have loved you."

When Setzer shifted, she saw he was getting hard beneath the thin sheet, his cock pressing a shape into it as talking about her mothering children turned him on. She needed to distract herself from that thought and everything it represented. 

How did he know that she didn't know her mother? Anger tried to take hold in Celes's chest, but it was like trying to hold a handful of sand in the ocean. It slipped through her fingers and left bewildered resentment in its place.

There was a light knock on the door. Without moving or taking his eyes from Celes, Setzer called, "Come in."

A uniform-wearing crew member quietly opened the door. For a moment, the hum of the engines was louder, and the young man set up a tray stand, clipped it to the wall, and then set out two covered plates, two cups upside-down on saucers, and a pot of coffee. Then the man looked to Setzer. He had surprisingly youthful features, with warm brown eyes, smooth cheeks, a refined nose.

The sailor looked only at Setzer, not at where Celes was curled half-dressed beneath the covers. "Can I get you anything else Captain?"

"That will be all, Breck."

The sailor gently closed the door behind him, leaving the room thick with the smell of coffee. Setzer stood, letting the sheet fall. Entirely nude, he was thin and barely muscled at all, with body hair as fine as silver fuzz and not a scrap of meat or muscle on his bony, scarred frame. His cock hung between his legs, a little thick but not standing at attention, nestled in a neat thatch of silver hair. Celes couldn't help but stare at it. He had violated her with it last night, and would probably violate her with it again today. It didn't look particularly large, not that she had a lot of experience, there. She just thought it would have looked bigger from how it had felt inside her.

"Do you see something you'd like?" Setzer's tone was teasing. 

Celes realized he was watching her look at him, and she shifted her eyes to the window. "No."

"Good." There was a clatter of porcelain, a tinkle of silverware. "Because we should eat first. You may already be eating for two."

The thought churned Celes's stomach. She refused to get up, absolutely refused. "Just the coffee, for me."

A weight settled onto the bed next to Celes and she flinched away, but it was just the tray with a cup of coffee and an uncovered plate of omelette on it. Above it, Setzer frowned a little at her. "Sit up. You'll eat everything on the plate, for the sake of our child."

His cock shifted at his last statement, Celes knew she didn't imagine it. She didn't even like eggs, but she picked up the fork and dug in with imposed enthusiasm. The eggs were fluffy, well-seasoned, with the folded in vegetables and cheese adding savor. Across the tray, Setzer picked at his omlette without appetite, as if the food was just fuel for his body. How Celes wished she could eat, before doing severe violence against him and then running for her life. The thoughts floated, popped like bubbles, and were gone.

Too soon, her omlette was gone too, and her coffee cup drained. As if he had been waiting for that, Setzer purposefully moved the tray onto the stand by the wall. She didn't need to look at his crotch to know what he wanted next. It was clear from the way he looked at her as he eased back down on the bed.

Celes looked off toward the windows. She wouldn't plead, she kept her blurry voice even. "Not again. Not so soon."

She recoiled from the brush of a hand against the thick blue coverlet, dragging it down, exposing her thighs to the slightly chill air. Setzer's urbane voice was low and warm. "While I hope our child is already forming inside you, my strong and stubborn wife, the more we try, the more chance there is for us to make a baby."

His palm pressed on her shoulder, pushing her drugged, heavy body back to the mire-soft pillows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Promises of more dark things to come! I have some idea of where this is going for at least a few chapters now.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Setzer has some dessert after his breakfast in bed with Celes.

As Celes was pushed back into the pillows, she held the rest of her body as tense as she could, legs closed tight, shoulders stiff. She knew that Setzer would probably command her to relax, like he had the last time. How could someone relax when a man she didn't want was looking at her like a piece of steak? Only because the drug would make her.

Setzer settled by Celes's feet and pulled the covers off her legs. The soft material had been only the flimsiest of shields, but it had been something, and now it was gone. Only her short chemise was left, and that hadn't saved her the night before.

Setzer's breathing had gone slow and deep. His eyes lingered on Celes's legs, then slid up her body. Normally violet, they had deepened to a darker purple as they worked their slow way toward Celes's face. She couldn't decide whether to glare hatred at him or ignore him entirely.

With an ego his size, ignoring him would probably hurt him more. She looked back to the windows. The lace curtains seemed out of place here, patterned in some sort of blooming flower. She could probably remember which if she tried hard enough.

Fingertips traced along the top of her foot up to her calf, caressing her skin like the barely remembered lover she'd had as a teen. Trying to remember her old flame's name was a welcome distraction as Setzer's fingers played around on her shins. Or the name of the flower in the lace pattern, either would do. Roche? No, that had been her personal combat instructor.

Low-voiced, Setzer said, "I would not think you would reject me so hard after your pleasure last night."

Celes didn't try to stop her eyes from rolling. Pleasure? Her body had done what bodies do when stimulated a certain way, that was all. Calling it pleasure made it sound as though she were complicit. 

But she wouldn't give Setzer the attention he sought by arguing with him. What was the name of the flower? Lady's mantle?

His fingertips brushed along her knee, slid on the outside and underneath to linger in the sensitive hollow. Celes's breath caught in.

"Just like you are enjoying my touch now. When you were an Imperial General, surely no one treated you as a woman should be treated. Worshipped."

Celes's wasn't going to look at him. Not even as his fingers caressed around her knee and toward the inside of her thighs, where her strong warrior's muscles held them tightly together despite that her body wanted her to loosen them. Even drugged so senseless she couldn't remember the name of a common flower, she had more will than that.

Until Setzer took it from her. "Stop fighting me, my darling. Look at me."

The words echoed in Celes's head like her own thoughts, impossible to ignore or deny. Her muscles loosened against her will, her eyes dragged themselves off the curtains. Look at him. His expression was intense, she didn't want to look into his eyes. She would look at his forehead. Surely that counted.

It did. The pressure of his command eased, though she couldn't tighten her muscles again. Her legs stayed lax as Setzer's soft fingertips caressed the insides of her thighs, stoking up that slow, hated warming in her core.

"You really do hate me, don't you?" Setzer's voice was colored with amused curiosity, as if he couldn't quite believe it.

"Yes." Celes put all of her anger and bitterness into her answer, hoping it would cut him so he would stop this charade and just get on with what he was going to do anyway.

Instead, he sounded thoughtful. "I've never had a woman hate me before. They come to me, throw themselves at me, for my charm and fortune. And they leave pleased, perhaps carrying a bastard as a fond remembrance." His damn finger had moved from her thigh to the tender line where legs and torso met, dragging up the hem of her chemise. Her breath caught when he stroked her there, she couldn't help it, not with the order to stop fighting him hanging through her mind like a damp fog. "They do not hate me."

"At least one does." The words blurred together as Celes pushed them past her numb lips. "I do."

Setzer didn't address her statement. A smile played on his thin lips, she could see it even though she was focused on his left eyebrow. "It is rather intoxicating, to think of winning over such a strong woman. Of making her mine."

When Celes drew a breath to contradict him, his chuckle intercepted her. "Yes, I know you aren't mine, yet, even though we are man and wife. But you will be. I am a man who loves a challenge, after all, and who rarely loses."

His fingertips toyed in the blonde bush she had never wanted to take care of, then stroked feather-light across her lower lips. The brush across her clit left her gasping. Her hips rose a little into it.

Don't fight him was an echoing refrain in her mind. _Fuck._

Celes settled with relief when his fingertips trailed off down her thigh, but then they were back, stroking between her puffy lips in the wetness of her unwilling arousal. When his slick fingertips circled her hard, aching clit, she moaned and her hips rose to press against his hand. His fingers circled, circled and her body responded by pressing into it rhythmically.

Setzer murmured, "I see that 'don't fight me' works much better than 'relax.' I shall have to remember that." 

Celes barely payed attention. The building pleasure in her lower body was tightening her chest, rocking her hips without her permission into the caresses on her sensitive nub.

When Setzer's hand pulled away, Celes knew better than to feel any relief. His hands instead moved to her thighs, pushing her legs wide and exposing her wet pussy to him fully. There was no reason for relief. Celes knew what would come next.

Or she thought she did. But instead of climbing onto her, Setzer's head bent. Loose wisps silver hair brushed her stomach and thighs. What was he...

Hot breath warmed her mound just before Setzer's lips grazed her throbbing nub, dragging a fresh gasp out of Celes. His tongue lapped against her swollen lips, lingering in the crumpled edges of the folds. Then it pressed deeper, firmer, opening her like a flower and laving slowly upward until it met his lips to suckle on her sensitive clit.

A moan tore her throat. She had never in her fantasies imagined anything feeling like this. She could barely feel her fingers where her hands twisted the sheet. None of her anger or resentment could hold up against it. Her hips arched toward his mouth and she couldn't help it any more than she could help her heart from beating.

Setzer lapped Celes's cunt and suckled her clit again and again, and the waves of sensation washed over her in a flood. She drowned in them until she couldn't feel where one motion began and the other ended and were his fingers inside her she couldn't tell because she was coming in gasping sobs and her body was spasming with the sheer pleasure of her release.

She was still riding her orgasm when Setzer mounted her. His weight pinned her down and his cock rammed inside her, hard and hot, stretching her still-shuddering tunnel with quick, hard thrusts. Almost before Celes realized she was being fucked, his cock jerked, spraying his hot seed against the entrance to her waiting womb.

"Celes," Setzer mumbled into her hair. He still twitched against her cervix, the mild cramp nothing against the lingering buzz that was her entire body. He pushed himself up on his elbows to look down at her, his scarred face smug and eyes glinting with his pleasure.

Celes spat in his face. 

She hadn't intended to, hadn't formed it into a conscious thought. It just happened. She then thought for a moment about biting the expression off his face, giving him another scar, but a chorus of don't fight him don't fight him howled in her mind and swatted the thought away. Celes was left grasping after what she had meant to do, disconnected from whatever the idea had been.

Setzer's eyes shifted from royal purple to violet. Celes's spittle glistened wet on his cheek. He lifted a hand, and while Celes couldn't fight him, she decided she'd take the beating with the dignity that suited her former office. She'd gladly pay that price for her defiance.

She didn't expect him to simply wipe the spittle away, or to give her a fond smile. "My spirited wife."

Setzer pulled his softening cock out of Celes and stood, leaving her sore and dripping with their juices. Suddenly free to move, she clamped down on something that wanted to become a sob. She had no idea why she should feel so humiliated by something she had no say in, but shame tingled with the aftereffects of pleasure on her skin. And he had treated her defiance like an adult ignoring a child's tantrum. He began rifling in the wardrobe like nothing had happened. Celes wanted to throw something at him and scream until he acknowledged what he was doing to her.

She couldn't. Of course she couldn't throw something at him, and she wouldn't give him the pleasure of a scream. So she glared at his back and imagined violence, even though the specifics were dashed out of her mind over and over again.

"Get cleaned up and dressed, my darling." Setzer said. "We have some shopping to do today."

Despite limbs that were uncoordinated and heavy with the fresh dose of the drug, despite a mind that raged like a sea storm, Celes moved to obey. She had no choice.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Celes attempts to escape during a shopping trip with Setzer.

Celes had almost nothing to wear. Her chemise was soiled, stained with the fluids that had leaked from her body after Setzer's attempts to get her pregnant. Semen was even now drying on her thighs.

The only other article of clothing Celes had was Maria's white and brown costume dress. That, at least, was serviceable, if wrinkled from its night spent in a pile on the floor. Celes picked it up and pulled it on over her nasty chemise. She struggled to do the laces by herself. It was nothing like her leotard, which was designed to be easy to get into. 

In contrast, Setzer was dressed and presentable almost before Celes peeled herself out of the bed. Drawing from the wardrobe, he pulled on an undershirt, a crisp white shirt, and black trousers. His only hesitation was over a collection of silk sashes, settling eventually on a plain emerald-green sash to belt his trim waist. He combed back his silver hair, shrugged into his fine black coat, and then he was ready. 

Celes was still struggling the lace her sleeves. Her sash and slippers both remained crumpled on the floor.

Setzer opened the door. "Finish up here. I'll return shortly. Do not go anywhere, my darling."

A few moments later, Celes felt the ship shift beneath her. She hoped they would not be landing in Narshe or any other mountain settlement. Without the thick white cloak of an imperial general, it would be very cold, even at this time of year. Late spring still meant snow in the mountains.

Celes laced her slippers on and waited. 

It wasn't long before Setzer returned and offered his arm. "Come along, darling. We will sit together until we've arrived. Normally, I would prefer to fly the ship, but the mate can handle it, as we are on our honeymoon."

Celes stepped to the door. Coming along didn't mean taking Setzer's arm, so she left it standing there until he let it fall. He loosed an amused hum, then held open the bedroom door for her.

Between the lack of equilibrium from the drug and the motion of the ship, Celes lost her balance as she tried to step out. She yelped when she smacked her knee painfully against the door frame. She focused on her footing, not looking up at a smirk she knew would be there. What she wouldn't give to wipe that...

_Don't fight him._ Celes lost track of what she was thinking about. 

With a hand on the finely paneled wall for balance, Celes doggedly followed Setzer to a thickly upholstered, purple velvet couch by a bank of windows in the main gaming room. It looked vaguely familiar, perhaps the same couch on which her marriage had been forced upon her the previous evening. It already felt so long ago.

Setzer settled in beside her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She wanted to shrug it off, but his drug-imposed command to not fight him kept whispering in her head. Instead she watched mountains pass below, rolling a slow transition into plains. It looked like the Vector region, and Celes found herself perversely hoping that they would land in Maranda. The inhabitants of the city she had sacked wouldn't help her, but they might put her out of her misery.

Instead, the airship thrummed across the landscape to the south. When it started to descend, Celes saw that the town they were approaching butted right up against the ocean. Albrook. Rich, long occupied by the empire, strategically important for its port. 

And half the world away from Jidoor and the Opera House where she had last seen her friends. Depression threatened to crush Celes's soul. Passively, she watched the ground slowly move up to meet the airship, which seemed to be touching down on a level field sized especially for it. 

After the ship bumped against the earth, Setzer stood and offered his arm. This time he said, "Take my arm," and Celes rose to do it.

"And stay close while we're in the city."

Setzer escorted Celes through the ship toward the engine room with its loud machinery and rushing crew. Once in the cargo bay, Celes could see that the cargo bay doors had been converted into a ramp that was lowering to the ground.

Some curious children had gathered to watch. And already, longshoremen stood by, leaning on heaped crates and barrels. Celes noticed she got a few second looks, but whether it was from recognition or her disheveled appearance, she couldn't say.

Setzer spoke cheerfully while he led her down the ramp and into the city. "We are going to my favorite tailor. I must have you dressed as befits my wife, and you shall of course behave accordingly. After that, I shall send you to the ship while I conduct some business, and then we'll be off."

Celes chose not to respond. 

Only part of it was defiance. She had nothing to say to him. The other part was a strategy to avoid more commands that might constrain her during an escape attempt. An idea about how she might get away was trying to percolate in her drug-fogged mind. She could feel it. 

Setzer strolled with Celes along streets first crowded with dock workers and hawkers, but he ignored them, rapidly leading her to a better area of town, where wide glass windows displayed a variety of wares and smartly-dressed men and women shopped or conversed on the street in pleasant tones. Setzer exchanged a nod here and there, and even Celes saw a few faces that looked somewhat familiar.

Over all of it, soldiers in magitek powered armor stood on street corners, ostensibly to protect the crowd from Returner terrorism. From her time in the Returners, Celes knew that all the propaganda claiming that they targeted civilians was false. But the empire's citizens believed it because the emperor told them to believe. Even Celes had believed it, right up until she was ordered to poison Doma's water supply and it became clear which side was actually killing civilians.

Celes was so deep in her reflections that she barely noticed when Setzer led them into a shop and locked the fine wooden door behind them. Bolts of brightly colored fabric were displayed in its wide, sunny windows. Behind a counter, a plump woman with curly dark hair and warm brown skin worked on basting cloth onto a dress form.

"Good morning, Melody," said Setzer.

Melody turned from her work with a smile. "How can I help you today, Mr. Gabbiani?"

Setzer brushed his hand across the back of Celes's shoulders. "It is my pleasure to introduce my new wife, Celes. She is in desperate need of proper clothing. Ideally something that will accommodate changing needs, as we are keen to start a family."

Celes supppressed a shudder. She thought that Melody's eyes flashed with something. Concern? 

When the woman spoke, her warm, musical tone was true to her name. "Oh, that's easy enough! We'll leave enough material in the seams for later expansions. Though I'll be honest, Mr. Gabbiani, your wife will likely need regular adjustments, and then special dresses for late in her term."

"She will need slippers, as well, and perhaps some fine gloves."

"Of course. Then, if you would just follow me for measurements, Mrs. Gabbiani?"

Celes stood still. Melody's inquiry had none of the strength of a command behind it. And if her escape plan was going to work at all, she needed Setzer to cancel or replace his command to stay close.

"Well?" Setzer was impatient. "Melody truly is the best. She closes shop just for me, setting aside all other customers. She shouldn't be left waiting."

Celes planted her feet and spoke through gritted teeth. "You told me to stay close."

"Ah." Setzer breathed out smug, insufferable amusement. "You may move about as you'd like, my dearest. I'll select the cloth while you are measured."

As Celes followed Melody toward a curtained-off area in the back corner, Setzer asked, "How is your son?"

"Growing like a weed. He has his father's eyes, though Eluric says they resemble his cousin's." Melody's voice was fond and amused. "His hair is all mine, though, thank goodness."

"And does Eluric still work the ships?"

"Oh, yes, he purchased his own vessel from the proceeds of the shop, and we import our own cloth now, as well as...."

The light banter continued over the curtain while Melody stripped Celes out of her gown with a practiced hand. Her nose wrinkled at the state of Celes's shift, but she said nothing, instead pulling a knotted rope off a peg. Melody started with Celes's legs measurements, giving her time to work up her nerve. 

When Melody was just finishing measuring Celes's shoulders with the knotted rope, she knew it was now or never. Celes whispered, "I desperately need your help." 

The woman's brow furrowed with confusion. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Gabbiani?"

Celes bit down on the urge to correct Melody about her name. It didn't matter. She whispered urgently, "I was forced into a marriage, and I'm being held against my will. Is there any way out the back?"

The tailor's confused look slowly distorted into one of anger. "Of course."

"Will you distract him, just for a moment?"

Melody's lips pressed. Then she said the one thing that could have ruined Celes's plans entirely. "Wait here."

Celes was suddenly glued to the ground as Melody brushed past the curtain. She struggled to move her legs, to shuffle even a single inch forward, but she couldn't move. Her chance to escape had presented itself, and Celes could do nothing.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Setzer punishes Celes for trying to escape?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't forget to check the tags! I add new tags each chapter if something new applies.

Celes still struggled to move. Melody was in the front of the shop, probably distracting Setzer so that Celes to escape out the back, but the tailor's thoughtless command to wait had stuck Celes's feet to the floor like they were nailed in place. 

Until, after a few moments, Setzer's voice drifted over the curtain. "Celes, come out here."

Celes was suddenly free to move, but she didn't like where her traitorous legs were taking her. _To the back!_ she screamed at them with her mind, but instead her hands pushed open the curtain, and she stepped out from the little cubby and turned toward the front of the store.

By the counter, which was stacked with several bolts of elegant cloth, Setzer stood with his arm around Melody. She leaned into his sideways embrace like a lover, and she glowered at Celes as she stepped out from behind the curtain. She also looked disappointed, somehow? The woman's expression made no sense to Celes.

But Setzer's expression was different. He looked like a cat who had gotten into the cream. Fond exasperation with a glint that loved the hunt, as if Celes's escape attempt was a game he had won.

Celes was not even surprised. She had known deep down that something like this might happen, but the risk had been worth any possible cost. The question was what cost he would extract for her defiance.

"Melody and I go way back." Setzer slid his hand along the curve of Melody's waist, and the woman leaned into the caress while glaring hatred at Celes. "I told you we were friends. That you counted on her to imperil our friendship, and her livelihood, to help a disgraced former general? Quite the gamble."

Melody huffed. "What I don't understand is why a man of your caliber would marry someone so unworthy."

"My first choice was taken." Setzer's smooth reply made Celes roll her eyes.

It was pure flattery, but Melody's cheeks darkened with a blush. "Oh, Setzer!" Melody snuggled in against his side. "I'd throw Eluric over for you in an instant. Surely this hag's behavior is grounds for divorce?"

Yes, Celes begged Setzer mentally. Surely you can see it's going to be more trouble than it's worth to hold me prisoner.

"No," said Setzer. "I'm committed to making this relationship work." After a pause, he added, tightening his hand around Melody's waist. "But she must be punished."

Celes's stomach lurched. 

"Sit down and watch me fuck her," commanded Setzer.

Dizzy with relief that his punishment wouldn't bother her at all, Celes slumped to the floor where she stood. The dizziness was probably at least partly the drug.

Melody gasped as Setzer turned her and pressed her against the counter. It wasn't a gasp of alarm, Celes noted, as Melody pressed her generous rear against Setzer's crotch. Her fingers splayed on the wood, knocking bolts of cloth askew and holding her just off the counter, her matronly chest brushing the polished surface.

Setzer ground against the pillowy mound of Melody's ass and cupped one of her plump breasts, working it through her fine dress. "Are you on your cycle, my sweet songbird?"

Melody's dark curls bounced as she shook her head. "Not since last week."

"Then, as much as I enjoy taking your fine ass, I think I will give you a child." Setzer ground against Melody, but his eyes shifted to Celes, as if to gauge her reaction. He punctuated each question with a roll of his hips. "What do you think, Melody? Should I fill you with my seed? Should I put a child in you while my wife watches? Maybe this one will have my hair."

"Oh, no! My husband would kill me!" Melody didn't actually sound alarmed. Her voice was thick with desire.

Celes met Setzer's eyes and kept her face impassive. While watching Setzer fuck Melody would be tedious, she was glad he didn't have a more personal punishment in mind.

So Celes watched like she had been commanded to. She watched Setzer grind against Melody's ass and gather handfuls of her fine skirt into bunches until he had it entirely rucked up. She listened to Melody moan while she ground back against Setzer, and gasp when he pinched her nipples through her dress.

When Setzer pulled back, Melody whined with disappointment. She couldn't see how he was shifting his pants to free his throbbing bulge. Setzer teased her, "Do you want it badly?"

"Yes!"

Setzer stroked himself with one hand and tugged down Melody's leggings with the other. Celes saw how her pussy glistened dark and wet with need. Setzer teased, "Tell me what you want."

"Oh, Setzer! I want you to fuck me! Please! Please, fill my womb with your seed! I want you to give me another baby!"

"As you wish."

Setzer lined up his cock and hilted into Melody's sopping cunt with a single powerful motion. He thrust into her so hard that Celes heard his balls slap against her mound.

"Yes!" Melody's shriek echoed in the small shop. Celes thought she saw the shadow of someone's head turn in the street, but because of Setzer's command, she couldn't look away from the couple. Setzer had told Celes to watch, so she had to watch, her eyes painfully dry.

Setzer fucked Melody hard and fast. The counter rattled with the force of his thrusts. Celes watched his gleaming wet cock pull out from and sink into Melody's swollen folds over and over.

"Oh! Oh! Yes!" The women's exclamations and rang out over the wet noises. Setzer kept his hands on Melody's round hips to keep his leverage, but she didn't seem to need him to do anything else with them.

In no time, Melody's exclamations turned into gasps, and then a breathless announcement, "I'm coming!"

As if the next wail wouldn't have given it away. Melody's back arched and she screamed, faced contorted with ecstacy, eyes shut so hard that they seemed to disappear.

Setzer looked directly at Celes. Smirked. And hilted himself deep in Melody one last time. He rocked against woman he had reduced to breathless gurgles. Celes already knew the look that came into his eyes when he planted his seed.

If he was hoping to make Celes jealous, he was so off base that she could have laughed at him. Instead she continued giving him the silent treatment, face carefully blank.

When Setzer pulled out, Celes watched a dribble of his cum roll down the inside of Melody's thigh. He was careful of his pants as he pulled out a white handkerchief and cleaned himself off.

Finally, Celes could jerk her burning eyes away and blink. Grateful tears welled up, washing eyeballs that had started to feel beyond gritty from being unable to blink. Celes wiped her streaming eyes, and when her vision cleared, she saw that Melody was smiling viciously at her.

The stupid woman probably thought Celes was crying from her 'punishment.' Well, let her. Celes had nothing to lose by letting a heartless, cheating shop owner feeling superior to her, and everything to lose by letting Setzer know he hadn't punished her enough.

And it seemed that he thought he had. Setzer and Melody spent what felt to Celes like hours in conversation about fabrics, dresses, and slippers, but then Setzer finally allowed her to get off the floor and get dressed. Between the numb tingling of her legs and the dizziness of the drug, Celes was again forced to hold onto Setzer's arm as they made their way out into the street.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Celes explores her confinement and gets a bath.

Celes was left alone in Setzer's room for several hours. A firm "don't leave" was all it took to make it so that she could open the door but not step over the threshold. Without the persistent drone of the engines, she could hear the shouts of the crew at work echo down the hallway from the main gambling room. 

There was nothing to do in the bedroom. She went through Setzer's closet, which was boring in the selection of its fine shirts, coats, and sashes. Each was clearly a masterpiece, and there were subtle variations, but none held weaponry of any kind. Celes considered sliping one of the sashes into her pockets to strangle someone with, but they were all so bulky. 

She could tear one up and make a fine cord, but there was nowhere to hide the scraps. She had to think with her brain, which was telling her to make sure she could escape, rather than her emotions, which were telling her to get out of here yesterday.

There were a few combs. A heavy mirror, firmly attached. A nightstand with side rails and nothing on it, firmly attached. The freshly made bed took up most of the room.

Out the window was a remarkably boring view of cropped grass extending to the city's wall. There was no way to open it, even if she could have made herself jump out. Celes slapped the curtains closed with an irritated noise, then slapped them open again. A crappy view was better than no view.

Lunch was a tasty stew. Celes hated it. She was dozing in the corner, unwilling to sleep in the bed, when a gruff voice said, "Come with me, Mrs. Gabbiani."

A female crew member stood in the door frame. She was an older woman in the same uniform as the rest of the crew, with dark eyes hard as onyx in a sharp-featured face and salt-and-pepper hair pinned tight in a bun.

Celes told herself that she wasn't Mrs. Gabbiani, but her arms pushed up until she stood, and her feet shuffled her toward the crew member anyway. She followed her down the hallway, turning away from the gambling room toward the other end of the hall, where the airship's hull noticeably tilted up. The crew member flattened against the wall and pushed Celes through a narrow door.

Inside was a small chamber with a polished wooden floor, and on it sat a tub full of steaming water. The air was fairly scented of roses, a few pale petals floating on the water's surface. A porthole high in the room had been opened to let out the humidity and let in air that smelled like spring grass.

Celes started at it. It seemed entirely foreign to her, but of course a man like Setzer would have a tub somewhere.

The crew member nudged Celes farther inside and closed the door behind them. The two of them and the tub made a crowd in the tiny chamber. "The Captain says you're to strip off your soiled clothes and bathe."

Had he said that? Good for him. The sailor hasn't phrased it as an order, so Celes kept her hands to her sides, tightened into fists.

Her resistance was futile. The burly female sailor simply stripped her and muscled her into the tub, where she washed Celes's hair and scrubbed her pink like a child. As humiliating as it was to have someone else wash her sore intimate parts, Celes kept reminding herself that refusing to cooperate was part of her resistance.

When the sailor's task was complete, she said gruffly, "Get out or I'll drag you out, Mrs. Gabbiani. It's all the same to me."

Celes got out of the tub. It was strange to stand while someone else toweled her off and combed her hair. She had been taking quick pot washes with a rag for almost too long to remember. Despite the circumstances, Celes felt truly clean for the first time in quite a while.

The dirty costume dress, soiled chemise, and road-stained slippers had disappeared during the bath. Celes wondered if she was to be returned to Setzer's room nude, but instead the sailor shook out a long, sage green cotton shift and tugged it down over Celes's head. It had embroidered hems and short sleeves, like a lady's night dress.

It wasn't much, and it was tight over the bust, but it would keep her modest. For now.

The sailor marched Celes back to Setzer's room and left after a terse, "Stay here."

Leaving Celes alone with her thoughts. Fingering the hem of the night dress, she doubted the bath was intended to be just a kindness. Maybe Setzer was getting tired of her smell? Or perhaps this was just a part of her new routine, and the scene he made in the tailor's shop was making her paranoid?

It didn't matter. Celes settled in to wait.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Celes actually does get punished for disobeying orders, in front of the entire crew.

It grew dark outside before Setzer returned. Celes was hungry, and it was an open question whether she had been forgotten or was being sent to bed without supper. It didn't matter. Celes had suffered worse for longer. It had only been two days. 

It was hard for her to believe it had only been two days.

When Setzer came in, he smelled of cigar smoke, and he had a concerning twinkle in his violet eyes. "We made a fine profit on the cargo and should be loaded to fly within the week. The first of your dresses will be ready tomorrow, and the rest next week, despite how you embarrassed me in front of Melody."

Celes said nothing, leaning against the window frame and pretending to look out at the darkness. The airship's lights cast interesting shadow-patterns on the grass. She had nothing to say to him that would improve her situation.

After a few moments of silence, she heard the soft sound Setzer's boot made when he stepped onto the carpet. "No apology?"

Celes kept looking out the window, unwilling to give him any of the attention he so clearly craved. She doubted that anything she might say or do would change whatever he had in mind. 

"A shame," said Setzer, not sounding regretful at all. "It would have been an opportunity to mitigate your punishment."

Somehow, Celes had known the show in the shop wouldn't be punishment enough for him. 

"Come, my darling." Setzer held his arm out to Celes. For a moment, she resisted the command's pull, but all she could manage was a fleeing hesitation.

Hand on Setzer's arm, Celes walked down the hallway into the main gaming room. The roulette table had been moved and an odd contraption had been set up on the main floor. It looked like a standard whiskey barrel, but it lay on its side on a wooden frame. 

So many sailors had assembled around the room that it must be the whole crew, or nearly that. All eyes turned to them when Setzer led her in. Celes's gaze flicked over their faces in return. Interest. Pity. Uncertainty. Wariness. Excitement. Fear. Nothing boded well.

When Setzer led Celes over to the barrel, she went with him without fighting the command-compulsion because she had the feeling she was going to need all of her energy soon. 

Setzer addressed the gathered crew. "Do you know why we have assembled?"

Someone answered, "Since the barrel's hauled out, Captain, someone must've fucked up."

"Earlier today, one among us disobeyed an order." After Setzer spoke, the shifting was immediate. Concerned sailors looked to their companions. A few looked worried, others uncomfortable. Until he added, "My wife." 

The relief in the room was immediate, then Celes sensed a nasty turn. Some of the sailors, mostly but not entirely male, were looking at her in a new, hungry light.

Celes didn't want to see the lust in the eyes of some of the gathered crew, mostly men but some women, too. But she took a deep breath to steady her breathing.

When Setzer next spoke, it was a command. "Mrs. Gabbiani, pull your dress up over your rear."

A sickened sensation rested in the pit of Celes's stomach. Was he going to rape her here, in front of the entire crew? Her hands dropped and twisted in the fabric of the night dress, pulled until the hem of the dress was above her waist, exposing her legs, ass, and bush to the entire room. Some of the sailors shifted for a better look. A few of the men shifted in a different way, adjusting bulges.

"Lay across the barrel on your stomach," said Setzer. 

Celes found herself turning more fully to the barrel. It was at just the right height that leaning across it put her on her toes. The rough wood was a little polished toward the center, as if hers wasn't the first stomach to rub there.

Bending over the barrel left Celes horribly exposed. Her fingers clutched against the wood by her waist. At least she had an excuse to look down away from the hungry sailors without it being a sign of fear. The edge of the barrel curved toward the floor, the stand out of reach from this angle.

"Stretch your hands down the other side. Make no moves to cover yourself."

Celes's hands left the top of barrel reluctantly. With her hands stretched over her head down the barrel, all her weight was on her stomach. She had to turn her cheek to rest against the wood, but thankfully, she couldn't see far. She tried not to think about that last command to not cover herself.

She flinched when something touched her exposed ass. Cool, thin, and smooth, it brushed against her soft, creamy skin. Setzer's voice was low. "Do you know what this is?" 

It was long seconds before Celes realized he was waiting for her to respond. "No."

"My crew models itself on the Imperial navy. Those who disobey are caned. A cane used improperly can cripple, even kill." The smooth wood drifted back and forth across the curve of Celes's ass, and she suppressed a shiver. "Fortunately, I am experienced in disciplining my crew."

Celes let her eyes close and focused on her breathing. She had been subject to corporal punishment before, even whipped once so that an officer would know how it felt, the discipline instructor had said, though Celes privately thought he had enjoyed it. She had been beaten and raped. She had the strength to get through whatever this dandy would do to her.

"I ordered you not to embarrass me today, my sweet wife, but you did. Let none in my crew say that punishment is not meted out evenly on the Blackjack." He wasn't talking to Celes, he was talking to the crew. "How many strokes for disobeying a direct order, first offenses?"

"Five, sir!" a mature voice responded crisply.

"A count of five, then, from the one to be disciplined." 

The caressing wood lifted from her skin. Celes couldn't help but tense in anticipation. 

The **crack** of the cane and the sharp cut of pain cross her bare ass were only one beat removed, as if her mind needed time to process the immensity if it. The core of agony spread burning across her entire ass in both directions before fading to a sharp ache. Celes choked down a yell and made herself lie still, as badly as her body wanted her to squirm. She wouldn't give Setzer the satisfaction, she swore to herself, even though tears started in her eyes. 

Setzer's hand unexpectedly brushed over her welted ass. Even feather-light, it pulled a pained noise from Celes's throat as it roused the fire back to roaring where it passed over the strike. "You forgot to count the stroke. And so the stroke does not count."

His hand lifted away.

Celes thought she was prepared for the next stroke, but when the **crack** came, she barely choked down an agonized noise. Her entire ass felt on fire. "Two," she spat out, too close to a sob for her own comfort. 

Setzer's chuckle sent ice down her spine. It did nothing to cool her burning flesh, especially not when Setzer's hand brushed the strike, cold against her flaming skin but searing both of her stripes afresh. "That was 'one.' An improperly counted stroke does not count."

Before Celes could gather herself, a new **crack** of pure pain sliced into her, setting her entire body on fire. Celes couldn't help herself--she jerked and yelped with the pain of it. She wanted to yank herself off the hated barrel, but she could no more do that than she could lift her hands to protect herself.

"One!" she choked out. She squirmed, but no position was less painful.

A few of the sailors chuckled. She could hear others whispering to reach other about how red her ass was, or how pretty her cunt must look with all the blood in that area. If she'd just spread her legs a little more while she squirmed. They bet she was wet.

Setzer's hand caressed cold fire on her ass, then lifted away. Awash in pain, she tensed, then relaxed. It would be worse if she was tense when the stroke landed.

Celes breathed out, and agony erupted across her ass with the vicious **crack** of the cane. Celes tried to hold it in, but a low keen escaped her throat. Then, "Two!"

The humiliation was worse than the pain, she could hear the sailors whispering about how they'd be remembering this in their bunks later. She felt her hands reflexively closed into fists. She made them relax.

After, "Three!" Celes realized she was pounding on the barrel without even knowing she was doing it, a frantic struggle to push her off the barrel and away from the pain. His command roared back into her mind at a volume she couldn't ignore. Her hands had to be above her head. She knew after the passing, burning pressure of Setzer's hand that the next stroke was coming. She heard the faint whistle of the cane and knew she shouldn't tense.

She tensed. **Crack!** Agony sliced the top of Celes's thighs, blossoming fire down her legs. She yelped, then told herself deliriously that at least she hadn't screamed. Tears steamed down Celes's face and off the end of her nose. She tried to keep from sobbing. "Four!"

An ice-fire caress. It would be the last one. She could hold out for the last one. Celes heard the cane whistle and she tensed.

**Crack!** The last stroke erupted lava crosswise against all the prior strokes, setting Celes's whole body on fire. 

Her ragged scream echoed off the polished floor and around the room. She sobbed, no longer aware of the shifting in the room, barely aware of herself. Ther pain receded and then roared back like waves in the ocean, and she reached for the dark spot in the water that lingered just beyond her mind's grasp.

The pain-tingling caress on her ass at first barely registered, then it brought Celes back to her senses. She had to... she had to...

She choked out, "Five!" 

Celes had no tatters of pride left to hold onto. She sobbed and shivered against the barrel, tears and snot dripping against it while her body throbbed and her ass burned. Her entire being was an empty vessel of burning agony and broken pride, and it all drifted in and out on waves that felt close to unconsciousness.

When soft hands pulled her off the barrel, but she barely noticed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I probably don't need to warn anyone reading smut this dark but HEY LISTEN this has a caning, but this ain't BDSM. Because she didn't consent, get it? Also, never ever ever hit someone with something when you don't know what you're doing.
> 
> Carry on!


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Celes wakes from a nice dream back into the nightmare where Setzer just won't leave her alone.

Celes shivered under a thick blanket and curled closer to the source of warmth. Locke was stroking her hair and telling her how well she had done. Even though her head throbbed and her lower back throbbed in time with it, in the soothing rocking of words and consciousness, she felt protected and at peace. Even if she was crying and didn't know why. She curled closer to Locke's nearly hairless, bone-skinny body and sucked its heat into herself.

"I miss you," she mumbled against his shoulder. "I really miss you."

"I am right here," he whispered back. His hand stroked over her hair and down her shoulders. "I am so proud of you, my strong, stubborn wife. Seven stripes before you cried out."

 _That wasn't right_ , her mind whispered, like a dreamer's mind surfacing in a nightmare, telling them to wake up. _This isn't right._

The chest against which she curled wasn't covered in fine hair over wiry muscle. The back her shaking hands clutched was too bony. The voice was wrong in pitch and inflection.

Celes pushed away from Setzer with a scalded noise. The motion reminded her body that it had been recently, seriously abused. The sharp ache rocked from her knees to the small of her back and radiated outward, and Celes's breath hissed out with it. She realized that she was naked under the blanket, and she pulled it tightly around herself.

"What is wrong?" Setzer's gentle question and look of concern made Celes's mind turn red.

Her voice shook not with fear or pain, but with anger. "What's wrong? You beat me. You keep raping me. You defrauded the empire into thinking we're married. You keep drugging me. You... you...."

Celes ran out of words. She shivered in her blanket cocoon. Her aching ass was on fire and the rest of her had turned to ice.

Setzer looked hurt. He actually looked hurt. Then his expression shifted, as if Celes was the crazy one, the one in the wrong. As if he were the sensible one. "I did not defraud anyone. You tried to defraud me by cheating on our deal. I only ensured that you met the terms of your forfeited bet. You wagered you would be my wife. And you are."

He was so delusional that he probably believed his own twisted logic. It was impossible to argue with him. Celes didn't know why she tried.

When Setzer turned away to grab something off the nightstand, Celes hoped that would be the end of it, that he would put out the electric lamps and leave her to rest, if not sleep. But he turned back with a little green jar in his hands. 

Who knew what it contained. Celes squirmed away from him toward the edge of the bed. A pained pant left her lips, and she willed herself to not make that noise again.

Following her eyes, Setzer glanced at the jar. "A potion, to ease your bruises."

"I don't want anything from you."

"My darling--"

Celes cut him off. "I don't! Want! Anything! From you!"

Panic was building in her chest. It was as if all of her repressed adrenaline and fear had been dumped into her system at once. Every time she breathed or shifted, the sharp ache from her abused ass seemed to prod it to new heights.

Celes panted in short, sharp breaths, and still she couldn't breathe. She needed air! She started struggling out of the blanket, sweating and shivering at the same time.

"Stop," commanded Setzer. "Relax."

All of Celes's muscles loosened at once. As her body let go of the tension, Celes started sobbing. She had no idea why, and she hated that it was happening. What was wrong with her? How had one beating knocked her so entirely off kilter?

One beating. A kidnapping. Repeated rapes. Having her free will stripped from her. If she cut herself some slack, perhaps she was allowed a little emotional turmoil. 

The thoughts flashed through her mind in the time it took Setzer to scoot closer and start peeling the blanket from her hands, which continued to tremble even though she couldn't clench them. Celes's repeatedly body started to tense, then relax, as the command echoed through her.

"Lie on your stomach." Even if said tenderly, it was a command. Celes rolled onto her stomach, though she kept her eyes on him. Physically relaxed but wary. A prisoner in her own body.

Setzer carefully unscrewed the cap from the potion bottle and tipped some of the teal liquid out into his scarred palm. He applied it liberally to Celes's skin. If she had been able to work her magick, she could have cured herself in no time. Instead, she had to endure it as his fingers smeared the potion around.

The relief was immediate, but the bruises still ached a little. Not a particularly strong potion, then. Still, the relief and order to relax slipped the cover off the deep well of Celes's fatigue. Her eyes closed. 

Even after Setzer applied the potion to entire rear, he continued to rub his hands over her ass in a slow massage. The bone-deep ache head become less sharp and more bearable, but still it hurt. And Celes didn't want him to touch her. Not there or anywhere. 

Of course, it didn't matter what she wanted.

Setzer's fine hands massaged first one rounded cheek, then the other, fondling where the smooth skin met in lines at her thighs, rubbing the curve where her ass turned into her back. With her eyes closed, Celes could almost imagine that it was Locke. He had touched her like this, before they both realized how hard intimacy would be for her.

Setzer didn't care about Celes's comfort. Still slick with potion, Setzer's hands cupped the curves of Celes's waist, then slid beneath to cradle her stomach. He murmured, "Soon, you will swell here as our child grows inside you."

It shattered Celes's illusion. Locke wouldn't ever have said something like that. She was suddenly, acutely aware of Setzer's breathing as he leaned over her, the way his voice had thickened with arousal.

Hot on Celes's cold skin, Setzer's hands rucked the sheet under her as they shifted up her ribs. He slipped his fingers between the sheet and her breasts and cupped them in his hands, each more than a handful. His chest was warm against Celes's back when he bent over her to whisper into her hair. "You will swell here, too, with milk. More than enough. Bosoms like these will produce heavily with a little stimulation."

Setzer's fingertips circled her sensitive nipples until they peaked, then he tugged and rubbed them until Celes wanted to squirm with the sensation. Not pleasure, but not pain either. It was more like a direct line to her clit, which was starting to tick and throb. Celes's whole body stayed relaxed, though she had to make herself breathe evenly.

"Mmmm," Setzer hummed against Celes's hair. "You do not have to relax anymore. But do not fight me, my sweet."

Setzer pressed against Celes's upper back and shifted his hard, hot length against the side of her thigh. He slid it against her in tiny thrusts that left her sticky with precum. One of his hands worked back down to her pussy, pressing between her and the bed, slipping into her moist folds. His fingers came up wet and circled Celes's clit with her own juices. She bit down on a moan, but she still heard the need in the exhale from her nose.

After Setzer had teased her sensitive nub a while, his fingers lingered in the petals of her folds, rubbing the delicious line between her cunt and the underside of her clit. Unable to hold back, Celes pressed her mound against his hand, meeting his soft strokes with rocks of her hips.

Setzer said nothing, but his hands withdrew. His weight shifted on the bed, and his hands parted her thighs and lifted her hips.

When the hot head of Setzer's cock slid between Celes's folds, she was ashamed that she was so wet and ready for him. His hard length sunk easily into her warm, accepting tunnel, and his fingers rubbed her clit in reward, dragging a shuddering gasp out of her. She felt her body part around his cock, as if inviting it deeper.

The pleasure of his spreading her open, the pain of his hips bumping the stripes on her ass, and the coiling, winding pleasure he stroked into her clit all became part of the same thing. Setzer's fine fingers expertly caressed her sensitive nub, every rub accompanied by a deep stroke of his cock that ended in a grind on her bruises. Her clit and ass sang a sweetly aching duet until Celes writhed beneath him, humping his hand when she wasn't pressing back against him, her body begging for release.

Setzer rutted his cock deep into Celes, forcibly it as deep as she went. The cramp of him rubbing against her cervix was just another form of pleasure. His soft fingertip caressed the very tip of her clit at almost the same moment each stroke, flicking it to encourage her to greater heights. 

A ragged, shameless gasp pulled into her lungs. Then Celes flew over the edge. 

"Ngaah!" She exhaled shapely into the bed, and her pussy clenched around Setzer's throbbing-hard length and pleasure coursed through her. Setzer ground the tip of his cock against her cervix and groaned a response when he exploded inside her, pumping his seed straight into her womb. Her cunt continued spasming, milking him of every tapering spurt so that her fertile womb could drink it in.

After Setzer had pulled out and rolled over to sleep, as Celes lay in the darkness with dribbles of his spent cum drying on the insides of her thighs and the ache of her sore pussy throbbing in time with her bruised ass, she realized that if she wasn't already pregnant, at this rate, it was only a matter of time. Part of her was too tired and abused to care.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the beating, Celes spends the next couple days in a haze while Setzer takes what he wants.

Setzer raped Celes again in the morning. She woke to his hands hot on her thighs and his cock already sliding into her sore channel. Before she was fully awake, she was gasping from the circles his fingertips stroked on her clit. When she came, it was hard and defensive, and Setzer's cum filled her a few moments after. He kissed her cheek before he left and told her to drink every drop of her juice. She napped most of the day.

He raped her again after dinner. The moment they were in the bedroom, Setzer pulled up the hem of Celes's new, stylish dress and ravaged her in it. Her sore ass slammed against the door again and again while his pubic bone smashed her clit between them and his thumbs tormented her aching nipples. When her body finally had enough and clenched around him in a painful release, Setzer slammed into Celes a final time and sprayed his seed against her womb.

The next morning, Celes tried to push him off, but he told her stop fighting. He suckled her breasts until she was sure her nipples were bleeding before he shifted to suckling her clit. He fingered her sore tunnel until her entire body clenched and shuddered with overwhelming pleasure, then he forced into her to make his deposit.

While Setzer got dressed, he fantasized out loud about whether their child would have his hair, her eyes. After he had gone, Celes scraped as much of his semen out of her as she could and flung it into the chamberpot. The numb cocoon she had spent the last couple days in was starting to tatter and fray. If she didn't find some way out, this would become her life, and there was still a large part of her that couldn't abide that.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Celes discovers that escape won't be simple and bides her time.

The problem with escape, Celes found, was that they never left the southern continent. Setzer ran the airship from Maranda to Vector, Vector to Albrook, Maranda to Tzen, and any combination in between, but never farther north than Tzen. The entire reason the Returners had needed his airship in the first place was to get to the southern continent, since the steam ships were all firmly in control of the empire's armada. Help wasn't coming.

And as days turned into weeks, Setzer's attention to detail left her with few opportunities for outright escape. At least over time, the twice-daily drugging affected her less overtly. She learned how to find her balance under its influence, but she gave up trying to work her magic. 

She didn't give up the idea of escape.

Her first thought was to work the crew around to her side. But the only people Celes spoke with regularly were Setzer, the burly sailor who chaperoned her for baths, and the young man who brought her and Setzer's meals from the galley to the game room. He also brought her meals to the bedroom when Setzer was out late, but since Celes didn't like the way the young sailor leered at her, it really limited her options. Whoever cleaned the bedroom did it when the room was unused and might as well have been a ghost.

During one of her twice-weekly baths, Celes tried to pull some details out of her gruff female captor. She could have used almost anything, really, but trying to talk to the woman was like trying to talk to a brick wall.

The only question to which Celes got more than a single-syllable answer was disheartening. When her hair was half-washed, Celes finally asked, "Why won't you talk to me?"

The hard-eyed woman's response was blunt. "My daughter was killed in Maranda, but only after they brutalized her."

The accusations were left unspoken. By troops Celes led. By a strategy Celes engineered. 

Celes wanted to shout that she had just been doing her job. But she had known war had casualties. She just never expected to face the consequences of that so directly.

After rinsing her hair, the burly woman hauled her out her bath. While Celes stood naked, dripping on the floor, the sailor looked her straight in the eyes. "If I didn't respect Captain Gabbiani, I'd have broke your neck the first time I set eyes on you. I don't want to talk to you. And you won't talk to me anymore, either."

Celes wasn't intimidated by the stare. She looked right back into the burly sailor's dark eyes, but she didn't say anything. She had already caused this woman enough harm.

Afterward, the sailor help her into the usual fancy dress like nothing had happened, then combed and braided Celes's hair. After her hair was dry, the sailor would come back and comb out the braids, giving her blonde locks the wavy look Setzer favored.

The dress that time was of a fine sapphire fabric, with darker blue embroidery at the hems and ruffles at the throat and cuffs. It was gathered in at the waist by a sage-green sash with fine ivy embroidery, and it had matching sage slippers with leather soles. The sailor laced it on over a soft, knee-length linen chemise. 

The style didn't suit Celes at all. The long skirts weighed down her legs, the bodice bound her chest in its effort to lift her breasts out of the sea of ruffles, and the slippers were entirely useless. How did people stand wearing this stuff? You couldn't run in it. You certainly couldn't fight in it.

And it had been a different dress each time so far, making six dresses total. It was a crazy expense. Celes would have killed someone for a single dress and the materials to sew pockets in it, to secret some useful items or gil. But Setzer didn't keep her dresses in his wardrobe.

She had no idea why Setzer dressed her up to just lock her in the bedroom. Maybe it was because he enjoyed taking the dresses off her, entirely or partially, in his continued quest to knock her up. He rarely missed a morning or evening session, and he always finished inside her.

It troubled Celes when she began to look forward to dinners with Setzer. Her determination not to talk to him was breaking down. A person could only do so much of staring out a window without going mad. They spoke over dinner about his work--what cargo the Blackjack was carrying for the war effort, where they would land it, what mercantile goods they were shipping, what state dinners he was attending, which merchants were annoying him. 

Celes knew the uses of isolation, as an intellectual subject. She recognized that she was becoming accustomed to captivity and her captor. She hated him, but she also relied on him. Celes told herself she was saving her strength and biding her time. Because what else could she do.

Until she ran out of time to bide.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Celes is out of time to bide.

Celes and Setzer had supper on the ground near Tzen. There were fine cuts of beef in a sauce heavy with mushrooms and onions, perfectly roasted asparagus on the side, a glass of drugged wine for Celes and a glass of the normal variety for Setzer, followed by soft cheese and apple preserves. She enjoyed the food, if not the company.

The fruity aftertaste from the slave-crown drug still lingered in Celes's mouth when Setzer said, "Let's retire for the evening, my darling."

After they stepped into the bedroom, Setzer closed the door and led Celes to a now-familiar spot by the bed. He turned her to face the mirror and slipped behind her, where he began lightly running his fingers over her curves. His lips lingered on the nape of her neck, breath smelling like wine. The now-familiar warmth that Celes hated began between her legs.

Setzer slid one hand around Celes's waist to her stomach. He pulled her tight against him and ground his bulge against her ass through their clothing. Then his hand pressed lower, massaging her mound through her skirts, not quite on her clit but close enough. When he undid the leaves of her bodice, the loss of pressure on Celes's chest came as a relief, and she could finally take a full breath.

Setzer slid the shoulders of Celes's dress down her arms and fondled her breast through her chemise like he had done dozens of times.

But this wasn't like dozens of times. Celes's nipple was rock-hard in an instant. It was profoundly uncomfortable, and now her entire breast ached. She couldn't help but gasp.

Setzer's low-rubbing hand paused. He murmured against the back of Celes's neck. "Are you starting to enjoy this, my sweet? Do you earnestly look forward to my caresses?"

"No." Celes had humored him, but she had never implied that her end of their so-called marriage was anything but unwilling.

"Interesting." Setzer's breath warmed the back of her shoulder. "I wonder...."

Setzer fondled Celes's breast again, lifting it gently, each finger working individually over her nipple through her soft chemise. After three fingers, Celes squirmed against him to escape the sharp ache. His cock was so hard against her ass that she could feel it twitch even through all the layers of their clothing.

"When," Setzer continued tormenting her breast with feather-light touches, "was your last cycle, my darling?"

Celes's stomach turned to ice. She should have started one this week. But she hadn't wanted to think about it, because it would make everything more real.

Celes didn't answer, but Setzer didn't need her to. In the mirror, she could see him grin against the back of her shoulder after her silence. He looked like a happy evil cherub bringing the worst sort of news. 

And he also looked hungry. "There is nothing as alluring as a beautiful woman with child."

With how hard Setzer's cock was against her, Celes expected him to pull up her dress and fuck her right then. Instead, he continued slowly undressing her, until her dress and chemise were in a pile at her feet. Even the passing whisper of the chemise made her chest ache.

Celes studied herself in the mirror. Her waist was as trim as ever, her stomach flat. Perhaps her breasts were slightly larger, but that always came with her period. She didn't look pregnant.

Except that, as much as she wanted to live in denial, she knew he was right. Of the dozens of times Setzer had filled her with his seed, one had planted. Had it been the time he had emptied directly into her womb after whipping her? The first time he raped her on the bed? The time he fucked her against the door? One of the times he suckled her clit until she screamed and then thrust himself all the way in?

Celes hugged herself, wincing when her arms settled over her aching breasts. 

"Don't hide yourself, do not touch yourself," Setzer's voice was soft, but it was a command. 

Celes lifted her arms from the defensive hug, and she held them awkwardly to the sides, having nowhere else to put them. Setzer's violet eyes lingered on her curves in the mirror. Then his hands joined them.

He cupped the curves of her waist. From there, his hands slid over her stomach and up to the undersides of her breasts. The heavy mounds ached to be left alone, but Setzer touched them anyway. He gently massaged Celes's breasts with the lightest pressure. His thumbs circled low on her areolas, brushing close to her nipples. Her chest ached and her clit throbbed and she held her breath.

The barest brush of Setzer's soft thumb on the underside of Celes's nipples spiked twin needless of pain into her sensitive breasts, and a roar of fire from her core leapt to meet them, leaving her untouched clit throbbing and aching. She swayed against Setzer and moaned out loud. She hadn't realized that 'weak in the knees' was an actual sensation, but suddenly she needed to hold onto something. Since she couldn't touch herself, her hands groped until they found Setzer's waist behind her, and then she held on for dear life.

She felt Setzer smile against the back of her shoulder. He continued teasing around Celes's overly sensitive peaks, brushing them only rarely. When he did, sparks shot into chest. The pleasure that followed the pain wasn't just focused in her aching clit, but instead spread over her entire body.

The nipple-teasing settled into gentle rubbing, at first too intense to handle, but swelling into fiery pleasure. Every time Setzer gently pulled Celes's nipples, she hoped that the next time, he would drop a hand and rub her clit. She ached to touch herself, but she couldn't. Arousal was wet on her thighs, and she squirmed, trying to rub against herself, but she couldn't get an angle.

Celes trembled against Setzer, wanting, aching. Setzer's cock ground hard against her back, and she pressed against against him, like a creature of pure physical need. What was happening would happen whether she enjoyed it or not, and Celes wanted to come. She needed to come. But the fucking bastard wouldn't touch her where she needed to be touched.

When she was panting between soft cries and twisting against Setzer like a torture victim, he finally gave her what she needed, though it wasn't what she thought she wanted. He stroked the peaks of her nipples, then he pinched them and gave them a twist. 

Celes screamed before she knew whether it was in pain or pleasure. She came suddenly and hard in lava waves all over her body. Pleasure coursed through and over her, burning her alive with its intensity.

When Celes came back to herself, she was slumped against him, trembling. His hands cradled Celes's stomach, and she realized he was holding her up. Her entire body was covered in sweat, and her clit and tunnel and breasts ached fiercely.

Setzer whispered in Celes's ear, "Stroke me?"

He had never asked Celes to touch him before. She realized that she would rather do that than have him inside her again.

Celes turned and touched without looking, and Setzer's hands settled on her hips. Setzer's cock was steel-hard under his fine trousers. He moaned when she rubbed his full length through the cloth, and when her hand worked downward, she could feel how tight his balls were to his body. He wasn't faking how close he was. 

She gripped him and stroked him through his trousers. Two strokes and his cock jerked against her hand, then settled into rhythmic pulsing. Hot wetness stuck his pants to her wrist.

Setzer held Celes against him for a few moments while they both caught their breaths. Eventually, Setzer mumbled into Celes's damp hair. "I love you."

He had never said such a stupid thing before. Celes pulled away and curled up in the bed, pulling the sheet tightly around herself. She watched Setzer in wary exhaustion as he changed his pants, turned the lights out, and left.

Through her fog of exhaustion, Celes tried to think through her strategy. Waiting was no longer an option. She would have to change her strategy. In the morning.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With her back against a figurative wall, Celes puts a new strategy into play.

In the morning, Celes was awakened by Setzer's hand caressing her stomach. As if he had been waiting for her breathing to change, he slid it upward and cupped her sore breast. Sleep had been difficult with how sore her chest was even when only the sheet touched it, and her breasts weren't any less sensitive to his touch than they had been the night before.

Yesterday, she would have ignored Setzer and remained as unresponsive as possible while he took what he wanted from her body. It had happened every morning so far, and with the way he had spoken the night before, Celes doubted that he would be any less amorous now.

Celes was the one who had changed. Her back hadn't been against the wall before like it was now. In a few months, she would be too far gone into the pregnancy to do anything about it, even if she did escape. She had to act now.

She tried to peel Setzer's fingers off her breast. "They're too sore for that."

"Don't fight me, my love," he murmured into her hair.

Celes stopped trying to pull his hand away. "I'm not trying to fight you. I just want to talk, first."

Setzer hummed low in his throat and lifted his hand. "Very well."

Celes shifted carefully, turning to face him. Just having the sheets rub her breasts really did fucking hurt.

Setzer's violet eyes were dark with passion, and even lying on his side, his cock was hard enough to tent the sheet. At least he didn't press toward her. He studied her face. "Something is different, this morning."

"I know you're right that I'm pregnant. I can feel it," said Celes, watching Setzer's face right back. The announcement deepened ther violet in his eyes, and he drew in a slow breath. She knew what she needed to say, but she hesitated.

Setzer filled the pause. "Still, you seem different. Something else has changed."

Why was it so hard for Celes to swallow her honor and lie? After everything he'd done to her, she owed him no honesty. And she needed to lie to him. He had taken her away from most of the crew, and that left him as the only one she could manipulate. She couldn't do it with sympathy. She needed him to let down his guard, and for that, she needed him to believe she had resigned herself to his plan, or had even come around to his way of thinking.

Celes's honor was everything to her. While she had done things in the past that some might consider dishonorable, it was while obeying orders. There was no dishonor in that. Her job was to obey orders, and any dishonor in the orders themselves were the responsibility of those giving them.

But to lie would be to act dishonorably for her own sake. It was different.

Celes stepped off that cliff. 

She chose her words carefully and kept her expression as neutral as she could. "I'm having this child. I didn't want this, but I can't deny that it will happen. I can keep fighting this..." _sham_ "... this marriage, and let it eat away at me. Or I can do what is right for the child."

Celes looked deliberately toward the wardrobe, then the fine curtains that were open to let in the crisp morning light by Tzen. "I've lived with you long enough to know what sort of life you can provide to a child. I'm willing to accept the circumstances, for the sake of the baby."

She glanced back to Setzer's face to gauge how he was taking the argument she had marshaled all night.

He appeared thoughtful, but Celes wasn't sure he bought it. "You speak of the child," he said, "but not of me. A wife should love her husband."

That was the one lie Celes didn't think she could sell, so she chose brutal honesty. "The child has done nothing wrong. But you? I could never love you, after what you've done to me."

Celes tensed, expecting an outburst.

Instead, Setzer smiled. "You will come to love me. I will not give up on winning your heart, my stubborn wife. It is my greatest challenge."

His hand settled on Celes's hip in a teasing caress, and she knew that to sell him on the story she was trying to create, to convince him she accepted her circumstance as his wife, words wouldn't be enough.

Celes reached out to touch Setzer's smooth, scarred chest. The thought of having sex with him filled her with revulsion, but she said, "This morning, we do this my way."

He raised an eyebrow, seeming more intrigued than put off. "Very well."

Celes grabbed Setzer's hand and pushed it lower. "Warm me up."

Setzer was very good with his fingers. He parted her lower lips and stroked the velvety petals until she started to moisten, then slid his finger deeper to stroke that delicious channel under her clit. Heat rose in Celes's stomach, quick and hot, and she didn't resist it this time. She let her hips shift against against his hand, let herself moan encouragement. She let herself gasp when Setzer's fingers slid inside her and curved against her inner walls, spiking a fire that rushed all the way down to her toes. His fingers slid in easily with how slick she was, and they brought some moisture out to circle her clit, sending a throb of need to her core.

Celes hesitated, then pushed on with the plan. Her body was certainly there already. 

She pressed her hand against Setzer's chest, and he looked surprised but let Celes push him onto his back.He was a truly skinny man. Against that backdrop, his erection looked huge, though Celes knew she had taken both larger and longer cocks with less preparation.

Throwing her leg over him was satisfying on a primal level. Setzer's hands settled on her hips, but he didn't force her. The decision to grind against him, to rub the head of his cock between her slick folds and tease her clit, that was hers.

Setzer groaned when Celes took him in her hand and guided him inside her. Her tunnel parted easily around him, used to his size by now and welcoming this time. She focused only on the physical. How good it felt to have a hard cock spread her open and slide against her walls, the spark of pleasure when he was fully inside and she could grind her clit against him.

Celes imagined Locke. She had never had sex with him, but this was how she would take him. She would rock against him and enjoy the full shifting inside as her greedy cunt tried to grip him. When Setzer's hands shifted to her swollen breasts, she imagined it was Locke's hands that spiked pain and fiery pleasure into her with just the lightest brushes.

She moaned pleasure and encouragement, and if the answering groan was in the wrong range, that was easy to ignore. _Locke,_ she told herself, willing it to be true. _Locke._

Celes dug her fingers into his chest to steady herself. When she shifted up, his hips rose to meet hers, and she slammed him back down. Her clit thrummed with the vibration and the grind against his pelvis. The heat built steadily with her rhythm until Celes was gasping. "Nipples! Now!"

He tweaked both of her nipples at once, and Celes came hard. The heat in her core exploded into fiery ecstasy. Her tunnel clenched around his cock and her entire body clenched with it, bringing her ride to a shuddering halt, but that was fine because he grabbed her hips and continued to fuck up into her, drawing out the pleasure of her orgasm. Celes was still shuddering and milking him when he grunted. Hot seed filled her.

When Celes opened her eyes, it wasn't Locke's warm brown eyes that looked up at her, but Setzer's cool violet ones, half-lidded with relaxation. Now it was shame that burned her skin. Before, what Setzer had done to her had been without her consent or participation. This time, she had been a willing participant. It felt like the worst kind of betrayal.

That she had her reasons was a thin salve over the deep cut to her honor. Celes told herself it would be worth it in the end. It would have to be.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Celes catches a break, but Setzer makes it clear that she's still under his thumb.

Celes and Setzer ate breakfast in the main gaming room, eggs and thick cuts of fresh bacon. There was an oddly metallic taste to the bacon, as if it had sat for too long in a copper pan, and Celes tried to ignore it. The sharp citrus juice in the glasses was out of season, but Setzer liked to keep his favorites on hand.

Setzer folded his napkin and left it precisely on the table. "I have meetings throughout the day."

"Before you go, I wanted to ask for something."

Setzer's eyes flicked to Celes untouched glass of juice, no doubt laced with the slave crown drug. The thing she most wanted to ask was for him to take away. But it was too soon. That ask would put cracks in the fresh plaster of lies that weren't yet two hours old. 

Celes had decided on a smaller ask, first. "Can you pick me up a book in town? I'm going crazy with boredom."

She would love to put him in that mindset where she cooperated and he rewarded her for it. It could become a useful habit.

Setzer's lips pursed. "I will have Breck take you to the ship's library for the day."

"Thank you." Celes didn't have to reach very far to put sincere appreciation in her voice. Staring out the window all day made each day pass with agonizing slowness.

Setzer leaned across the table and brushed his lips against her temple. "You're welcome, my darling wife. Now drink your juice."

* * *

Breck was the sailor who brought Celes her meals while Setzer was away. He was a thin youth with warm brown eyes, a tousel of pale sandy hair, and a refined nose. He had never answered Celes's questions, leading her to believe that he had been ordered not to speak to her. After clearing the breakfast dishes, he took her to a small room and ordered her to stay there until he returned for her. The order came awkwardly off his lips, and he scurried away before Celes could thank him.

The ship's library wasn't at all like the austere reasearch library at the Imperial Academy. The cozy space was squeezed in at the end of one of the decks. Like the bathroom, one wall had a marked outward lean. A leather armchair sat under an uncurtained window beneath the slope, an electric lamp on the small table at its side. Book-loaded shelves with high railings made up the entire opposite wall. 

Most of the titles were classics, but many were about gambling. Know your enemy, Celes thought, selecting Frobisher's book on poker before she settled into the armchair. The familiar scents of leather and books lulled her. Lunchtime came and went with Celes alternating between napping in the chair and trying to absorb a book clearly meant for people who already knew the basics of a game she knew nothing about.

When Celes woke up in the middle of the afternoon from one of her naps, she was disoriented. A tray was set up just inside the door with a sandwich, a fresh-greens salad, and a glass of milk. Condensation beaded on the glass, which felt cool to the touch, but her nose rebelled at the thought of drinking it.

Celes asked for a glass of water when Breck returned for the dishes.

The young man ducked his chin. "The Captain said milk, Mrs. Gabbiani."

"The milk doesn't smell right. I'd rather have water."

"The Captain said milk, ma'am." Breck was apologetic but firm.

Celes was too cranky to play nice. "Then I guess I won't drink anything."

Breck looked apprehensive, but Celes wasn't willing to bend. He eventually conceded. "I'll bring a glass of water. But the Captain said you should drink milk with lunch, ma'am."

She drank the glass of water he brought her, and let him take the milk with the tray.

* * *

Setzer was away through dinner, which Celes ate alone in the library before Breck moved her into the bedroom. Her tongue noted that her wine had been well-watered, but it still had the slave-crown drug in it.

When Setzer came through the bedroom door, the first thing he did was frown at Celes. "You wouldn't drink the milk with lunch?"

He hadn't even closed the door yet. Celes could have kicked herself. Was her failure to drink some nasty milk going to upset her chances?

She answered with the truth. "It didn't smell right."

Setzer's lips pressed. He shouted into the hallway. "A glass of milk!"

Breck delivered it and ghosted away, closing the door behind him. Setzer took a sip from the glass. "It tastes fine to me."

He offered the glass over to Celes. She took it and sniffed. It really didn't smell right. She couldn't identify what was wrong with it, but there was a markedly ripe smell to the milk.

Celes tried to hand the glass back. "It doesn't smell right to me."

Setzer was stem. "The milk is fine. Drink it." 

It was an order. Celes lifted the glass and drank the entire thing in long gulps. Each swallow made her want to gag as the revolting, ripe flavor rolled over her tongue, but an order was an order.

Setzer took the glass from her hand and set it on the nightstand. "There."

Celes closed her eyes, fighting nausea. She wanted to punch him, but as well as the chorus of 'don't fight him' that the impulse triggered, she had sacrificed her honor to make progress toward an escape plan. The sacrifice would be for nothing if she kept giving him reasons to keep his guard up.

She had to get out of here.

"I'm sorry," Celes said, the apology tasting as sour as the milk.

Setzer wrapped Celes in a hug, pulling her stiff, unwilling body against his scrawny chest. "I know you did not want to, but you must have proper nutrition if our child is to grow healthy and strong."

She felt his physical reaction when he talked about the pregnancy. The pressure against her thigh was subtle at first, but it grew as Setzer whispered into her hair. "A pregnant woman's body will sometimes reject things that are good for her. You must have the discipline to see that the child gets the nutrition it deserves."

It was increasingly clear to Celes that the idea of her pregnancy really turned him on. She briefly flirted with the thought of vomiting on him, both from the nausea and the situation. She could play it off, but it wouldn't be worth it. He'd probably just make her drink another glass.

"It really made me sick to my stomach," she mumbled against his shoulder.

Setzer chuckled into her hair. "There will be more of that before your work is done."

"I meant from the milk, not the pregnancy."

"I know." Setzer pressed against Celes, his erection throbbing against her thigh. "I have an idea to help you to feel better."

He had no idea how ridiculous he sounded. Cure her nausea with more sex she didn't want? It was likely to make her want to vomit even more. But Celes let him push her back toward the bed and sit her on its edge.

Setzer always seemed to enjoy undressing her. Maybe it was the slowly building anticipation for him? Celes had her theories, but no desire to ask him about them. This time, she was grateful that she could sit and fight her stomach while Setzer worked loose the laces of her dress and pushed it down to her waist. The chemise underneath was slid off her shoulders next. 

Setzer's fingertips, the sort of soft that hadn't seem hard work in a long time, played over Celes's skin as it was revealed.

He only backed away long enough to shuck his fancy shirt and pants. Celes looked off toward the darkened window. Not even her pretense of cooperation made her want to see how hard he was. For some things, it was better to pretend it wasn't happening.

The twin brushes of Setzer's hands on her thighs brought Celes back to herself. She blinked and found him kneeling before her at the end of the bed. He caressed her legs without parting them, fingertips stroked up the outsides of Celes's thighs, lingering on the flared crest of her hips, then shifting to brush across her flat stomach. It was soft with the small layer of fat that was always been there no matter how toned the rest of her body was with training.

He didn't say what he was thinking. With how his violet eyes lingered, he didn't have to. Soon, she would expand there. Nothing about the situation was helping her nausea.

"Lift up," Setzer said. 

Celes expected him to pull her dress and chemise the rest of the way off and climb on top of her, like he did sometimes when he was impatient, but she was surprised. Setzer did yank her clothing down her legs and shove it off toward the wardrobe, but he continued exploring her body with his hands instead of mounting her. He stroked her shoulders and arms, the curve of her neck. When his fingertips brushed her sore breasts, she flinched back and away.

"Ah," Setzer hummed. "Tender with becoming ready for your own efforts toward milk."

Without any further warning, Setzer shifted in against Celes, putting his mouth to her breast and suckling hard at her nipple.

Celes shouted in surprise and pain. Her hands went to Setzer's head to push him away, but that would be fighting him. She couldn't fight him. Instead, she wound her fingers in his hair, holding on and trying not to writhe as his insistent suckling shot needles of pain into her aching chest.

And then the warmth hit her. Oh spirits, as intense as the pain was, the pleasure came on its heels, tingling her skin and building a fire between her legs faster than her mind could keep up. Her fingers twisted in Setzer's hair, not to push him away, now, but to keep him in place as he brutalized her nipple with his adult-strength suckling. When he flicked his tongue over it nipple, he doused all of her nerve endings in heat.

Especially between her legs. Celes's thighs opened on their own as she gasped for breath, and Setzer pressed between them. His body parted her knees, but it was one of his clever hands that found her pussy wet and ready. With no resistance at all, he buried two fingers to the knuckles in her slick channel and stroked her inside. His thumb circled her clit in time with the greedy suckles on her breast.

The need in Celes's core had never wound so tight, so quickly. She pressed herself against Setzer's hand while she gasped and moaned, completely wanton. Celes gave in to sensation entirely, riding it higher. When the tension finally rose into an orgasm that burned through her like a field on fire, Celes threw her head back and keened.

The ***pop*** of Setzer's mouth releasing her nipple was accompanied pain or relief, Celes couldn't tell which. He shoved her thighs legs farther apart and pressed her back against the bed with his weight. His cock was hard and hot against her thigh. His first thrust missed, following the slick trail of her juices toward her ass. She helped him adjust, and on his second thrust, he was barely inside her before he came, pulsing even as he forced his way into her clenching tunnel.

After, they lay together, half on the bed and half off, both panting for breath. Eventually, Setzer pulled out with a wet noise and went to dig a towel out of the wardrobe. His seed oozed out of Celes, cooling quickly.

She pressed her legs together and climbed fully onto the bed, dragging the sheets up around her and curling on her side in her usual spot.

More than the wetness between her legs, every ache of her breast and every throb from her satisfied cunt, told Celes that she was a harlot. She wasn't even pretending not to enjoy the sex anymore.

Celes tried to remind reminded herself that it was all part of the plan, but that kernel of doubt was there, now. Was it just part of the plan, or had she come to enjoy getting off so much that she was deluding herself? What did it say about her, that she could take so much pleasure from something she hadn't wanted? Or did her enjoyment mean she did want it now, and she was only telling herself she didn't because... because why?

That's where the logic fell apart. Her body had enjoyed it when she fought, too. It didn't matter. She wanted none of it, whether she enjoyed it or not. But didn't she have some sort of obligation to fight back? But wasn't it fighting back, after all, to pretend compliance while planning escape?

Long after Setzer came to bed, the questions ate at Celes, keeping her from sleeping.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Celes adjusts to her role as the obliging wife.

The days again blurred into an increasingly uncomfortable week for Celes. Morning sickness wasn't an accurate description. The nausea came and went throughout the day, but it always came when drinking milk, and the milk showed up every day at lunch, whether on a tray in the library or at the table with Setzer. Since not drinking it wasn't an option, she held her nose and got it down.

It wasn't just the milk. Everything smelled wrong, or smelled more than it usually did. The stink when the engine room door opened was another thing that would provoke a wave of nausea. Even the smell of freshly scythed grass through an open window could be too much. Celes never reached the point of vomiting, but she resented each close call.

If Celes was being honest with herself, the breast tenderness was worse than the nausea, since Setzer seemed particularly and painfully interested in her chest during their marathon sex sessions. She had hoped that his interest might taper off after the gruff midwife stuck a dry fingers up Celes's twat and confirmed she was with child, but her condition just seemed to inflame him even more.

Setzer made a point of coming home for lunch and dragging her into the nearest room. The door would barely be closed before he was fucking her against the wall, or in a chair, or bent over crates of supplies. 

Her poor breasts were always featured, either as a way of tearing Celes into an orgasm or as a sexual booster for Setzer. He fondled and suckled on her chest like it was a playground meant just for him.

And he did things with them that Celes had never imagined as sexual.

The fourth or fifth day after the midwife confirmed the pregnancy, Celes was on her back in the bed, bucking her hips against Setzer's mouth while his fingers her worked to orgasm. He still insisted on making her cum, as if his pride depended on it, and it was easier to give in than fight. 

Celes was fully naked. It was warming up, especially outside a southern city like Maranda. In the afterglow, she expected him to enter her and empty himself like he usually did, and she had no plans to watch him fuck her. Unless he made her watch, she always kept her eyes closed and her fantasies in the front of her mind.

Setzer's weight shifted on the bed. He came around to her side. "Celes. Look at me."

Celes turned her head and opened her eyes. Setzer's cock was right in front of her face, rock-hard and beading with precum. She gritted her teeth against a grimace, even though she had expected something like this long before now.

Setzer's violet eyes were heavy-lidded as he looked down at her. "Suck my cock?"

It wasn't a command. Making it a choice was almost more cruel. Not that it was a choice, really, given Celes's new roll as the cooperative and obedient spouse.

She turned onto her side to face him, then hesitated. "I've never done this before."

He smiled, she hated his smiles. "Just do what comes naturally."

Well, that was no help. 

Celes propped her head up on one of her fists and leaned forward to take him into her mouth. Setzer's breath hissed in when she wrapped her lips around his cock, and his loose hands clenched into fists at his sides.

Setzer's cock was clean, at least, though it had a musty aroma and a bitter taste. The precum that slid on her tongue had a stronger taste, not enjoyable, but not as unpleasant as she'd expected. It was definitely not worse than drinking the milk every day.

Now that his cock was in her mouth, what was she supposed to do? What did he do to her clit? Suck and lick? She'd try that.

When she ran her tongue over the smooth head and the crinkled edges of his stretched foreskin, Setzer groaned and thrust a little into her mouth. Celes hadn't expected that, so she stopped and pulled away, not really wanting him to choke her. 

"Don't stop." Setzer didn't phrase that request as carefully. Celes was compelled to take his hard length back into her mouth and to resume licking and sucking him. 

He made it very clear, both with his low noises and how his cock twitched in her mouth, that he really liked that. Setzer's hands went into Celes hair, twisting in the blonde waves. She winced a little. If he savaged her mouth like her did her pussy, this was going to get very uncomfortable.

But instead, he had more instructions. "Put your other hand on my shaft," he said in a heavy, low voice, "and stroke it."

It was another command, but Celes didn't want to resist. Anything to get this over sooner. She wrapped the fingers of her free hand around what felt like soft suede over iron, and she stroked him toward her while she sucked and licked and teased. Precum leaked into her mouth with his small thrusts and she let it dribble out with her saliva. 

Setzer continued to instruct her between moans and pleasured noises. "Not too deep. Until we teach you how to be careful of your teeth. But. More pressure, with your hand."

She tightened her fingers around his length and stroked him harder toward her mouth when she sucked, rhythmic but for her occasional licks of his head. _Locke._ She would do this for Locke if he wanted. Celes let herself drift into her fantasy, lulled by the rhythm. His hands twisted in her hair and released, twisted and released in time with tiny thrusts from his hips.

When the cock twitched in her mouth, Celes braced herself. But Setzer pushed her back by her hair, tearing himself out of her mouth. He wrapped his hand around hers thrust hard in the tight grip.

His cock pulsed under her fingers like a thing alive. Hot cum splashed on Celes chest with the first few pulses, then dribbled on the sheets as Setzer's balls emptied. 

What the fuck? Celes's brain tried to catch up, tired from the pregnancy, tired from her earlier orgasm. Then it found relief, because on her chest was almost certainly better than in her mouth.

Setzer slid one of his thumbs in a pearl of cum near Celes's nipple. "So beautiful," he mumbled about Celes or the mess he made, it wasn't clear which. He continued to paint his cum on her chest as he caught his breath. Finally, he worked backward off the bed.

There was cum drying into an itchy crust on Celes's chest and she wasn't quite sure what to do about it. Giving her head a little shake, she reached for one of the loosened sheets.

"Stop," Setzer said. Celes's hand froze. She could only watch as he went to the wardrobe to retrieve a towel. 

Setzer tenderly toweled his spent seed from Celes's aching breasts. Even the soft material sent needles of pain digging into her when it brushed over her nipples. He spent much longer than he needed to wipe her off, then he used some water from the basin to clean her chest and wipe her dry again. Despite her first orgasm, Celes's core throbbed by the end, involuntarily aroused by the breast play.

After Setzer threw the towel toward the wardrobe, he turned out the lamp and curled away from her on top of the covers.

No matter how vigorously Celes rubbed her clit, or at what angles, she couldn't reach a second peak. It was like she was rubbing herself through a layer of cotton. She fell asleep somewhere before she finished, unsatisfied but blessedly free of thoughts.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Setzer continues to demonstrate how turned on he is by Celes's pregnant body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, another sex chapter featuring Celes's breasts. The porn part of "porn with plot." Honestly this should have been part II of the last chapter, but here we are!

Another time, after Setzer had brought Celes to a shuddering orgasm with his mouth, he grabbed each of Celes's sweaty, clenched fists. Unfolding her fingers, he said, "Give me your hands, and push them together here."

He placed her hands on the sides of her swollen breasts. They had once been a handful each, but they had surpassed that now as her body prepared for a baby. If Celes tried to cup her fingers around them, she couldn't reach them all the way around. 

Not that she wanted to cup her breasts. They ached more with handling. But the way Setzer phrased it, it hadn't been a request, and slave crown drug whispered in her mind that she should comply.

Pressed together, her sore breasts were pale mounds with peaks of dark pink nipples, already perking a little at the handling. Setzer surveyed the sight she presented. His cock, already more than half hard, visibly lifted further. "Delightful."

He shifted, throwing a leg over Celes. His cock rubbed sticky against her stomach, and she wondered if he intended to fuck her with her elbows in such an awkward position. At least her breasts wouldn't bounce around, she supposed.

Instead of entering Celes right away, Setzer suckled on her nipples, working them to hard points. Even though she was still wet with her own cum, the heat started between Celes's legs again, and she couldn't fully bite back a moan. It escaped through her nose. She felt Setzer smile against her skin, and she wanted to wipe it off his face with fire.

 _Don't fight him._ Ugh.

Setzer's tongue worked deep between the cleft of Celes'sbreasts, then he lifted up, shifting his weight and straddling her chest. He fisted his cock, which was throbbing-hard and beading with precum, and Celes imagined he would likely jerk off on her. Which was fine with her, all things considered.

"Hold them together tight now," Setzer said, then he shifted his weight forward and rubbed his hot cock against her sternum. It slid up into the cleft between Celes's breasts, trying to push her sore mounds aside. She pushed back with her hands, holding her breasts tight together while Setzer groaned and ground into the tunnel between them like it was her pussy. 

Each thrust was an ache, but not a particularly bad one. Closing her eyes, Celes decided she could endure it, perhaps even nap through it. But then Setzer paused.

He said nothing. His fine-fingered hands adjusted her grip on her breasts, turning her elbows in, moving her palms lower, lacing a hard nipple between each of her index and middle fingers.

When Setzer resumed thrusting, the brushes of Celes's fingers over her nipples stabbed the sort of pain into her chest that she knew would rapidly turn into hot need. Closing her fingers tighter was no better, as the slight pinch made her stroke her own nipples each time Setzer's cock rocked back and forth.

Burning need built between Celes's legs. Her only hope was that it would be fast. But Setzer did always take his things. Her core had become a bonfire by the time Setzer grunted and then said in a husky voice, "Here it comes."

Setzer's final thrust put the tip of his cock above the channel her breasts made for it, and the first rope of cum landed hot on her throat. It was only the one spurt, though. He deposited the rest of his seed between her breasts with jerky rocks of his hips.

Afterward, they were both panting.

Celes didn't have to open her eyes to know that Setzer was admiring his mess. She could feel the weight of his gaze and hear it in his breathing.

Eventually, Setzer climbed off of Celes and went to the wardrobe for a towel, then to the little water closet for the basin. He had never let her take her hands back down. While Celes listened to him move around the room, she started to rub her nipples, and then she couldn't stop. The stabs of pleasured pain were too delicious, too addicting.

Celes had forced her hands to still by the time Setzer came back, but he almost certainly caught the way the color was high in her cheeks and her breath came fast.

"You may relax," Setzer said. He stated toweling his cum from her throat. "But you need not stop."

Celes made herself drop her hands. She kept her eyes closed her eyes and imagined Locke while Setzer cleaned her neck and her swollen breasts. When he brushed the towel across her sensitive peaks, it was only with the greatest of effort that she didn't arch up into his hands.

By the time Setzer stepped away, Celes's tunnel ached and her clit throbbed. She planned to suffer in silence until he fell asleep, then to try to massage her exhausted clit into an orgasm.

Celes's damned breathing must have given her away again. As Setzer sat next to her on the bed, he asked in a low and warm voice, "Is there something you need, wife?"

Celes breathed in, let it out. She couldn't ask him. She wouldn't.

From nowhere, delicate fingers plucked at one of her nipples, making Celes gasp harshly. Her hips lifted a little of their own accord, and her low moan did her pleading for her. Fuck.

Setzer chuckled and continued stroking her nipple, milking it with his fingertips, sending sweet pain stabbing down into her cunt and stoking that fire back up. Double fuck.

Celes chose her words carefully. "You've turned me on."

Strictly true, but not the full truth, and not asking for anything. A fine bit of sophistry, but her pride burned. She couldn't fool herself.

It was just sex, she told herself as Setzer's fingers toyed with her sweetly agonized nipple. His other hand caressed her stomach, then slipped between her thighs, which were wet from her arousal. His voice was warm and amused, fond even, as he spread her legs and stroked her soaked petals. "I won't have it said that I left my wife wanting."

He splayed her open and pushed his fingers into her cunt. They went in easily, like she was eager to have them. He pumped them gently at first, his thumb circling her clit and his other hand milking her closer nipple. _Locke,_ Celes thought, and let her mind go.

It was some time before Celes came. Her back arched with the force of her orgasm, which so hard it was painful, like her body resented being forced to cum for what was probably the fourth time in twenty-four hours. After she had collapsed, panting, Setzer leaned in and brushed a kiss on her cheek. "Don't forget to drink a glass of water before bed. For our child."

Later, Celes lay in the darkness, Setzer beside her breathing heavily with sleep. She hated herself almost as much as she hated him, she realized right before her exhausted sleep claimed her.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A plan rebuffed just means that Celes has to set a different plan in motion.

As exhausted as Celes was, by the pregnancy, by the sex, she knew it was time to start seriously pushing Setzer's boundaries. He was in a perpetual good mood. That could be useful instead of just obnoxious.

The next morning at breakfast, when Celes lifted her glass of citrus juice, she arched her brows at Setzer. "Is this really still necessary?"

Setzer's head turned, and he regarded her speculatively with his violet eyes. "Do you object to continuing to be under my control?"

It was a dangerous question. A wrong answer could ruin her chances. She took a slow breath while considering. "No," she lied eventually. "I'm more worried about what it might do to the baby."

Celes didn't really expect that prodding his worry about the baby would get an immediate response, so she wasn't disappointed when Setzer said, "Several women have been bred under the influence of the slave crown drug, and in larger quantities than you are consuming, my sweet wife, with no ill effects on the infants."

On to the next angle. "It isn't just that. It doesn't make me as dizzy as it used to, but it still makes me clumsy and slows my reaction time. I'm worried that'll pose a danger as my stomach expands."

"I will set a sailor to walk with you, so that a fall does not risk harm to the child," Setzer said in a sensible tone.

His ability to find an answer to anything was one of his most irritating qualities. Celes felt a grimace try to rise onto her face. Instead, she forced herself to smile at him. "As long as the baby is safe."

Setzer leaned in and brushed a kiss across her cheek. "He shall be, and we will revisit this conversation after our child is born. Now, drink your juice."

Celes lifted the glass. Fortunately, she had other plans beyond convincing Setzer to stop drugging her. Today, she would keep working on Breck. If she could get the young man to lift Setzer's commands, accidentally or on purpose, she would be more than half-way home. And if sympathy didn't work, she could try to convince him to kidnap her and keep her to himself. Even if Breck thought to steal some of the slave drug on the way out, which Celes very much doubted would occur to him, she was positive he would be much less vigilant with it than Setzer was.

While Celes was forcing down her juice, Setzer finished his last few bites of toast. After he dabbed his mouth with a napkin, he said, "I have a few errands to run today. I am finishing a surprise for you, one I think you shall like very much. For now, you will return to the room."

Celes started to rise in response to the command, but it didn't preclude her from talking. "The room? I'd wanted to spend the day in the library."

"The room. Have a wonderful, relaxing day my dear."

It wouldn't be. It would be impossibly long and frustrating. But there would be as much point in telling him that as there would be in screaming for rescue. At least Breck would bring her lunch in Setzer's room, which Celes hoped would give her a chance to talk with Breck alone.


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another of Celes's plans doesn't go as expected.

Once back in the room, Celes immediately untied the cream-colored sash that accented her emerald-green dress and unlaced it while kicking off her slippers. She then tossed the ruffled overdress at the wardrobe and tugged down the edges of her thin cotton chemise. Even pulled fully down, the embroidered hem brushed well above her knees.

Celes briefly caught a glimpse of herself in the wardrobe mirror. Slightly tousled blonde hair fell around her shoulders, and deep circles emphasized eyes that were perhaps too brightly blue. It was a desperate sort of blue, infused with frenetic energy. The chemises Setzer favored on her had been tight through the bust before she hag become pregnant. Now, the fabric gathered in tight lines across the middle as it struggled to contain her swollen breasts.

She didn't like the look on herself, but surely it would draw in any healthy young man who was interested in women.

How far along was she now? About six weeks? Seven? Was it possibile that she'd only been a captive for three months at the most? It felt like years since Setzer had kidnapped her off the Opera House stage in Jidoor, but it was still spring, and a chill morning on the northern part of the southern continent, at that.

There was a tap at the door. "Mrs. Gabbiani?"

Shit, it was Breck, and Celes wasn't in place. As much as she hated the bed, her plan would work better if she was in it. She tossed the covers back and threw herself down. "Come in!"

Celes tried not to look too posed when Breck opened the door. 

She also tried not to think about how the last time she'd set a honey pot, it was what got her into this mess.

The young sailor stepped into the room. The moment when Breck realized that Celes was nearly naked and lounged on the bed was obvious--his eyes widened, he blushed crimson to the roots of his hair, and he nearly tripped over his own feet, which carried him over the threshold by momentum alone. He very quickly dragged the door closed behind him.

"Ma'am!" Breck's voice shot skyward with alarm and broke even on the single syllable. "I didn't realize! I mean, the Captain said to come here. He didn't say you would be, uhm!"

"It's okay! I wasn't sure when you'd arrive, and the baby makes me tired, so I thought I'd take a nap." Celes turned more fully toward Breck, propping herself on her side and holding her shoulders back. The compression from the chemise made her breasts throb forcefully. She wanted to make it seem that she wasn't doing anything improper, even though she had as much guilty intent as a thief. "I hope I haven't made you uncomfortable?"

Breck jerked his eyes to the wardrobe. Since Setzer liked to watch himself fuck Celes, it was angled toward the bed and wouldn't provide him any respite from her display.

"No, uh." Breck's voice continued to squeak. "The Captain asked me to look in on if you needed anything?"

Celes stretched one of her toned legs, causing the lower hem of her chemise to ride up her thigh. Setzer didn't like her to wear panties. It was as close to a full display as she could get without being too obvious. "I'm supposed to stay in the bedroom all day. Do you know why?"

"Yes but, but the Captain wouldn't like it if, uh, if I said." Breck looked at the window and shoved his hands into the uniform pockets of his sailor-gray trousers. His balled fists served more to accentuate his erection than to hide it.

There was something about his stance, the gesture. His voice. Celes tried not to purse her lips. "You remind me a lot of my little brother." Celes didn't actually have any siblings. "How old are you, Breck?"

"Fifteen ma'am."

He was almost a child! Celes was mortified. And now that she knew his age, she couldn't unsee it. He wasn't clean shaven, he didn't need to shave. He wasn't a thin young man, he was a tall and gangly teen. Fuck.

"I thought sailors couldn't bind to ship's articles until they were eighteen?" Celes tried to sound more curious than appalled. She wasn't sure she made it, but he looked too distracted to notice.

Breck nodded and shuffled his feet. "I'm not a full sailor ma'am. I'm the ship's boy. The Captain was kind enough to take me on after my dad left. Mom's got too many mouths to feed, especially with the new baby on the way, so me being here and my wage, they really help." He seemed grateful for the distraction, standing totally still and occasionally losing his struggle not to sneak looks at Celes in the mirror.

Celes floundered around the shards of her broken plan for something useful. In all fairness, she had been sixteen the first time she led soldiers into battle, younger the first time she'd had a lover. But that had been with someone her own age. She was a full adult, now, years older than this boy. 

Celes had stretched her honor, but not as far as corrupting children. She wasn't going to seduce a boy and ruin his life, much less when the poor kid's mom relied on him. She pulled the sheet up over herself.

"I'm sorry about that. I know my, my husband trusts you, but I'm certain he wouldn't have wanted you to see me like this."

Breck's flush seemed to drain to his feet, leaving him the color of soft cheese. "He was really clear about what he'd do to anyone who looked at you wrong ma'am, even if before, he'd sometimes--"

"I don't intend to say you looked at me wrong. This was a timing accidenf, that's all."

Breck swallowed hard and nodded gratefully.

Celes hoped Breck wouldn't report the incident to Setzer. She doubted he'd be as easily convinced that it was an accident. Would he put her over that barrel again? Probably not while she was pregnant. He'd probably do something worse.

She took a deep breath to steady her voice. "Would you get me a book from the library? I want to read when I get up. That's all I needed."

Breck almost tripped over his own feet again in his whirl about-face. "Yes ma'am, right away!"

After the door thumped closed behind Breck, Celes buried her face in her hands. She wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. Why did the universe hate her so badly? None of her choices were right or easy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long delay! Holidays happened, and then I had to go read back through my own stuff or I was going to have continuity errors like nobody's business. I hope to be more regular again going into the new year, but we'll see what life throws at me.


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Setzer has a surprise, but he'd rather show than tell.

Celes was napping again when Setzer got back from his errands. She woke up to him staring at her from where he perched on the end of his side of the bed. It wasn't in his usual repertoire of creepy behavior and it immediately put Celes on edge.

Judging from the angle of the sun, it was late afternoon. Setzer didn't do anything after she opened her eyes. She watched him for a few seconds, trying to gauge his mood to know whether she should brace herself for angry Setzer or be prepare to deal with the incessant horniness of happy Setzer.

Setzer smiled at Celes, his violet eyes crinkling in the corners. "I have a surprise for you, my sweet."

Happy Setzer it was. "What is it?"

Setzer cocked his head at her.

"Right," she muttered. "It's a surprise."

"Indeed. Get dressed. I will not have my wife wandering the corridors half-naked."

Celes threw off the covers and went to put on her overdress, sash, and slippers. She expected Setzer to pounce on her, as he seemed to particularly like her sleep-rumpled look. Though sometimes he did prefer to fuck her in a dress.

Celes had just shrugged into the overdress when Setzer stood and approached her from behind. She tried not to stiffen, to control her natural reaction to him coming close to her. His hand lingered on the curve of her waist, then slid forward over the loose fabric to cup her stomach, which wasn't quite flat anymore. His lips bent to Celes's ear and he murmured, "Soon."

Celes shivered. Not out of fear, certainly not out of desire, but rather a natural response to a warm breath on her ear. Setzer held Celes against him briefly, and she could feel that he was hard, excited. But then he slid back a step and his hands moved, sliding off her stomach and plucking the sash from her hand. He tied it on with the familiarity of someone who had done it more than once.

Setzer stepped away to wait by the door. His eyes were hungry, but at least she wasn't having to deal with it now. Soon would come soon enough and there was no sense worrying about it.

Celes bent to lace on her slippers. When she straightened, Setzer offered her his arm. "Come."

Celes made herself place her fingertips on it, like a woman walking out with a man she cared for. She didn't have a choice in going with him, but she still wanted him to think that she wanted to. One plan hadn't worked, but surely there would be another. She still wanted to get his guard down as far as she possibly could.

Setzer escorted her into the corridor. They went past the main gaming room, then through a door onto the landing of a set of stairs that Celes had never been up. When they went to the ground, it was down the stairs in the engine room, past the landings for crew quarters and cargo and out the cargo hatch. These stairs were lushly carpeted rather than metal grates. They belonged in the house of a rich merchant more than on an airship

As if to answer her silent questions, Setzer spoke while they went up. "The guest rooms are on the upper deck. Our deck is more our home, with our bedroom, galley, living room. Alas, there was no suitable room for your surprise on our deck."

Setzer stopped at the next landing, though the stairs continued up father still, and he pushed the door inward. "After you."

Celes stepped into a hallway so richly carpeted that her feet threatened to sink. The left wall had the faintest curve of the airship's hull, less pronounced on this level, and the afternoon sun streamed in from regularly spaced portholes. Doors lined the right wall at regular intervals, until the wall was replaced with a banister that overlooked the main gaming room. As she approached it, she saw that a few small lounges and a low table looked out over the gaming tables. Rooms continued on the other side of the lounge.

"Not that far." Setzer sounded amused rather than annoyed. He had stopped by the second door from to the stairs. The doors had plates with numbers on them, but this door had only empty screw brackets.

Was she finally going to get her own room? And some privacy? She shoved the thoughts down. She doubted it, and hope would only lead to disappointment.

Celes returned to Setzer's side, where he slid an arm around her waist and said, "Close your eyes."

Celes did, of course. She heard the door click, then Setzer escorted her forward. It was an effort to let him guide her steps, but her other option was staying in the hallway until he ordered her to follow, which would definitely piss him off.

The carpet underfoot briefly became hard wood, then carpet again. Soft but not as squishy. The air was sharp with the smells of freshly cut wood and something she couldn't place, something pleasant.

Setzer gently guided Celes a few steps and turned her. His hand slid around her waist and fondled her little bump, and his words were warm against Celes's ear. "Open your eyes."


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The surprise is a nursery, of course. And of course Setzer wants to break it in.

Celes opened her eyes. The surprise was clearly a cabin--no, it had been two cabins. The wall between them had been taken down. One side had a wardrobe in the same style as Setzer's, beyond which was a long, plush couch upholstered in blue velvet. It only had one arm, loaded with cream-colored velvet pillows and set under one of two portholes on the far wall.

Fresh bookshelves stretched above the couch, the railings high to prevent the books from falling off during a rough flight. The unstained wood was no doubt the source of the woody aroma, and the shelves themselves were empty. 

It would have been an ideal sanctuary, if not for the other side of the room. A crib was fastened in under the other porthole. The raw-worked cabinets above it were probably meant to hold equipment for babies, if they didn't already. Next to that was a padded and suspended chair, a clever-looking contraption that would probably rock with the motion of the ship. Finally, nearest the door, there was a waist-high table with its own set of high railings. Celes wasn't quite sure what that was for, but it was no doubt baby-related.

A nursery on the ship. Celes hadn't realized that part of her, the part that wasn't sure she'd be clever enough to escape before the birth, had whispered faint reassurances that Setzer would have to set her up in a house after, which would be easier to escape from. That part shriveled up and died, leaving an empty hole in the pit of her stomach.

As Celes tried to take in the room and sort the implications, Setzer's hand continued to slowly stroke her stomach. He murmured by her ear, "Do you like it?"

The first thing that came to mind was a scream of rage and despair. Celes went with the second thing. "I'm not sure why the table is so high?" 

"A changing table." Setzer was amused.

"Oh." Celes forced herself to sound genuine. "It's perfect. I'll be able to read and take care of the baby."

"The bookshelves were to be stained to match the crib, but the carpenter ran out of time today. Still, I could not bear to keep it secret one more moment."

Setzer's lips brushed Celes's ear, and his long fingers subtly kneaded her stomach. The press on her hip was definitely an erection.

"I can see why," she said.

Setzer's hand caressed upwards, cupping one of Celes's breasts through her dress. "The nurse will have the cabin next door. Any guests shall simply have to settle for the lesser cabins. I want you closest to the stairs."

"The nurse?"

Setzer chuckled. "Of course. I will not have you slave away at feeding and changing an infant like some peasant."

His brushing fingers pebbled Celes's nipple, and he began to circle his thumb around it. Either she was getting less sensitive, or she was getting used to the mingled pain and warmth. 

Setzer's voice thickened with desire. "You will feed them, of course. Any good mother would. But there will be someone to tend them at night."

Setzer's lips suddenly caught Celes's earlobe, sucking as he tugged on her nipple. "You will have more than enough for me, as well."

Celes winced and made herself stand still. She could break his nose from this angle. She fantasized about that for a moment before the thought was snagged out of her mind.

Setzer pulled Celes solidly back against him with one hand and pulled her sash loose with the other. He rocked his hard length against her ass as his hand worked into her dress. He held her close, alternately tormented her nipples through her thin chemise. Thrilling pain shot from her breasts straight to her clit.

Celes let her body do what it wanted. She gasped and shuddered and swayed as his hands worked her body and his lips worked the back of her neck. Her mind stepped back as if watching it all from a distance. Hollow.

When her nipples were liquid fire and her thighs were wet with arousal, Setzer pushed Celes forward against the changing table. She gripped the railing, and the rough wood dug into her palms. _At least it was sturdy._ The thought floated through her mind without anything to connect to.

Setzer unfastened his pants and rucked up her dress and chemise while his other hand continued to work her breasts. When her dress was high enough, he spead Celes's legs with one of his knees. His hands tightened on her breast and hip, holding her in place while his cock rubbed through her folds.

Then he thrust hard into Celes. He was so hard, but he went in easily. She was soaked, and she had been stretched around him so often that she fit him like a glove. The same thrust that spread her walls around his cock went so deep that it cramped her cervix.

He punctuated his thrusts with horrors whispered against the nape of her neck. "After the baby is born. I will drink from you. While you feed our child. And then. I will fuck our second child into you. While the first is on your breast. The ultimate act of motherhood."

Setzer cupped her stomach as he rutted into her hard, as if he wanted to feel his own thrusts from the outside. The fire from Celes nipples licked waves down her body. When it met the pounding friction from her cunt, she would--

"Sir?"

Shock slammed Celes back into get body at the same time that Setzer hilted into her and stilled. Her head whipped toward the door. It was open. He hadn't closed it.

A sailor stood in the doorway, a leanly muscled man with work-roughened hands holding a bucket, a folded canvas, and a wide brush. He smelled sharply of resin. His dark eyes seemed to drink in the scene.

Celes, pinned against the changing table, face red with her body's pleasure. Setzer's hand in her dress, still for now. The spread of her legs, the angle of their hips. How long had the carpenter watched Setzer rutting into her, and listened to his grunts and her little moans?

A grin was developing on the sailor's face. Celes flushed with mortification.

"I am clearly using the room. I will tell you when it is available." Setzer's tone was all annoyance, with none of the skin-crawling embarrassment that Celes felt. 

"Yes sir." The sailor took his grin with him when he left.

Setzer chuckled. His cock twitched inside Celes. "A few more minutes and we would have been done, yes?"

Celes couldn't answer. Her heart was pounding in a different way than it had been before, and her throat and mouth were both dry. The way the sailor had grinned lurked in her mind, profoundly unsettling.

Setzer murmured against the back of her neck. "Do not worry, my love. We shall get you back to your peak."

He twisted Celes's nipple while he pulled out and thrust in again. Her body shook with pain and pleasure, but she choked down on her moan, worried the sailor was still close enough to hear.

Of course, Setzer seemed to take that as a challenge.

A few minutes later, she scream-sobbed as he tore an orgasm out of her, and a bare moment later he filled her with hot seed. When he pulled out, their mixed juices trickled down Celes's thigh. Setzer continued to lean against her for a moment, both of them panting, until he gave the back of her neck a final kiss and stepped away.

While Setzer tucked himself into his pants, Celes pulled her dress straight and sashed it, wincing at the pressure on her chafed nipples. They each checked their hair and made adjustments. A familiar dance.

"I suppose I will have the carpenter told he may have the room." Setzer's voice was relaxed and amused. "The galley will have prepared dinner by now."

It had. Fresh steaks from the tenderest calves, fresh vegetables from Marandan fields. Drugged wine. All delicious.

Setzer fucked Celts again after dinner, fantasizing out loud about how he would plant a second child in her during the peak of her motherhood, and he sucked on her sore nipples until she wanted to scream. When Celes let her mind shut off, it was as much a defense as from exhaustion.


	23. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Celes makes progress on the barrier posed by Setzer's restrictions of her movements.

At breakfast, Celes looked across the little table at Setzer. His eyes were down as he buttered a sweet roll. She had refined her words and prepared her reasons, and the only thing to do was to throw them out into the air. "I want permission to move around the ship."

Setzer's violet eyes met Celes's blue. "Why is that?"

"I'd like to eat lunch in here even when you're away. I'd like to be able to take books from the library to," she had practiced it enough in her mind that there was no hesitation, "the nursery. Mostly, I want to feel like this is my home, not my prison."

The calculating look stayed in Setzer's eyes long enough for Celes to worry that she'd get a flat no. "That sounds reasonable, my darling wife."

Celes heart lifted. She'd be able to get a look at the engines, maybe sabotage the ship so she could get out of this damned place. Not likely, but it would be something to try.

"You may go where you would like in our living areas. But." Setzer paused, and Celes held her breath. "You may not enter the engine room or its stairwell, or go into the crew quarters."

So much for the engine room plans. Maybe if she could get a look at how the ship was steered, she could work out a way to get them back north. "Does that include the upper deck? I've begun stuck inside for months. I'd like to see the sun."

Celes's eyes stung with tears that weren't part of her careful manipulation. She realized that she actually did hunger for fresh air and sunshine, and she looked off toward the windows, frustrated and determined that Setzer wouldn't see her cry.

After a moment of consideration, Setzer said, "Our living areas include the upper deck. You may take the air."

"Thank you." Celes's voice was thick. This fucking baby.

"I want my wife to be happy. Have Breck take you up a chair if you go out onto the deck. There are neither chairs nor benches up there." Setzer leaned across the table and gave Celes's hand a squeeze. "For today, I will have politics to attend to here in Vector before we fly tonight. Do not expect me for lunch. Perhaps dinner."

Even just a morning in the open air and studying the ship's steering and bag mechanisms cheered Celes and gave her new energy. She sat in the chair Breck had brought and considered the complex system of ropes that held the airbag on. 

She also tested out thoughts. Her mind recoiled at the thought of walking through the engine room out through the cargo bay doors. But it didn't recoil at the thought of walking around the city, which would certainly be taking the air. He had said that Celes could take the air. She just had to find extra rope to get her to the ground without going through the engine room, and some supplies or portable wealth to get her by once she was down there.

There was just a little more planning to do. By lunch, Celes's pasty skin was threatening to crisp, and she needed a nap. She went inside in good spirits.


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Celes continues to have bad luck in the nursery.

A nap after lunch was becoming a habit, even though it left Celes a little nauseated. After she woke, she went to the small library to look for the poker book she'd been reading. It wasn't there. She knew where it would be, and she weighed her desire to have as little to do with the nursery as possible against the stretching boredom of the afternoon.

The nursery's shelves had a layer of stain, but they also had the matte look of unlacquered wood. The portholes were both hinged and propped open, but the smell was strong enough to make Celes feel a dizzy. 

The smell seemed to get stronger as Celes dug through the wardrobe. She found the poker book in a small pile of books at the bottom and quickly tucked it under her arm. When she stood and turned, the carpenter was blocking the doorway. He had placed his canvas, bucket, and brush on the floor off to the side. 

The carpenter was only a little taller than her, though not as tall as Setzer. His dark-tanned skin clearly saw a lot of the sun, there were threads of gray in his dark hair, and the lines around his intent eyes belonged to an older man. He nodded to Celes. "Ma'am."

Celes's danger sense pricked. She squared her shoulders and stepped to the doorway to push past him, to yell if necessary.

Instead of moving out of her way, the carpenter spoke in a low, rapid voice. "Don't move and shut up."

Celes froze in place and loosed the breath she had gathered in. She knew where this was going, and she wasn't sure whether she was more pissed off at Setzer or the carpenter.

"Get back from the door," he said.

Celes took two backward steps into the room, her heart pounding in her throat. She imagined, in detail, all of the things she would do to this man if given a chance. No one had told her not to fight him, but being unable to move or speak made it difficult to set him on fire or crush his throat.

Squinting at Celes, the carpenter followed Celes into the room and closed the door behind him. "Huh," he said. "Wasn't sure that would work. Okay, put your arms over your head." 

Celes's arms lifted. 

"Okay, put them down." 

Celes's arms lowered.

The carpenter sucked on his teeth. "Tell me how this drug thing works."

As the command to shut up was superseded by the question, Celes drew in a breath to shout the answer, but the man quickly added, "But stay quiet."

"As I understand it, I'll obey any command someone gives me."

"Okay. So if I tell you not to tell anyone about this, you won't tell them?"

"I won't be able to."

The carpenter frowned. "Can I just tell you to forget?"

"I don't know."

"Okay, forget what I just said." The carpenter waited a second. "Do you remember?"

Celes answered honestly. "Yes." She was telling herself over and over to forget that he had asked her to forget. It was like asking someone not to think of the moon.

"Huh. Think we can still make due." The carpenter smirked, and Celes wanted to burn it off his face. "Shut up and come here." 

Celes took her a step forward, and the carpenter grabbed her arm in a bruising grip to pull her the rest of the way. She stumbled into him, and a moment later he was shoving his tongue into her mouth. The smell of raw spirits made Celes's her eyes water, and it was better than the taste.

He pulled back and scowled. "Kiss me back."

Celes tried, but she'd never done much kissing with Setzer or anyone else.

After a few attempts, the carpenter pulled away, frustrated. "Kissing you wouldn't get a horny teen hard." The carpenter pressed down on Celes's shoulder. "On your knees then, slut. Suck my cock."

Scathing thoughts about how maybe she couldn't kiss like a whore because she wasn't a whore leapt into Celes's mind as she dropped to her knees. Her fingers fumbled the buttons on the carpenter's pants, but he made no move to help her. When she pushed them down over his hips, his cock stood half-hard in a wild bush of black hair, no matter what he'd said about her kissing. She reached for the thick shaft, trying not to breathe through her nose but intimately aware that this man didn't bathe very often.

Only moments after she sucked his cock into her mouth and started to work her tongue over it, the carpenter got harder and thicker. He twisted his hand in Celes's hair and moaned. "Fuck. Not good at kissing, but a great little cocksucker."

Celes used her hands like Setzer had taught her while the carpenter fucked her face. He wasn't nearly as long as Setzer and didn't threaten to choke her, but he was about twice as thick, and her lips tired rapidly.

The carpenter suddenly pulled out and yanked Celes up by the hair. He spun her toward the changing table, and for the second time in two days, Celes felt rough wood digging into her palms and a man's solid weight at her back. Her dress was again pulled up and a knee shifted her legs apart, this time clad in rough denim.

The carpenter didn't try to warm her up. His rough fingers parted her folds in a businesslike manner, then the head of his cock rubbed back and forth, searching. After the tip settled against her entrance, the carpenter stilled a moment. His strong hands gripped both of her hips and pinned her in place.

His cock tore Celes open. Or at least that's what it felt like as he forced his way inside her. She wasn't ready, and even if she had been, she didn't get wet as easily now that she was pregnant. It was a small grace that he was slick with her spit. 

Celes could only gasp hoarsely, and his command to shut up echoed in her mind even at that.

The carpenter grunted. "So tight. Captain must have a little prick."

He plowed his cock up into Celes, breaking her to him. He was much thicker than she was used to, so much so that it felt like he was fucking her with a chair leg. The burning pain would have seemed like a lot a few months ago, but compared to the caning or Setzer's regular breast torture, she could breathe through it. 

The violation was the worst. The feeling of again having something taken from her that she hadn't given freely. And even that feeling was less intense shame and more bitter anger.

The carpenter worked himself in and out of Celes at a measured pace. His hands didn't ease from her hips, and he spoke between thrusts. "Used to be the Captain would share his whores with us. Give them to the crew when he finished with them, okay? But we haven't had a good whore in months. Figure that's your fault."

It seemed to her like a pretty shallow justification for rape. Not that most men seemed to need much justification.

The pain gradually eased into a feeling of fullness, and Celes ignored the small shocks of unwanted pleasure when the sailor's rutting ground her clit against the changing table. This novice had nothing on Setzer, nor did he really seem to be trying. 

The carpenter's fingers gripped Celes's hips with bruising force and his pants and thrusts grew more ragged, and then he hilted into Celes and ground painfully against her. "Take it, you slut." 

The cock that was straining Celes's tunnel jerked. Hot seed splashed against her cervix, stung in her torn channel.

Panting, the carpenter gave Celes's ass a slap, then he pulled out. "Least I don't have to worry about knocking you up."

Celes remained leaning against the changing table, anger and shame rolling through her in alternating waves. Mostly anger.

"Okay." A greasy towel landed on the changing table. "Fix yourself up and get out. Don't tell anyone anything about this. And." Celes heard the calculation in his pause. "Come here after lunch tomorrow, too."

The carpenter tucked himself in and gathered up his tools. Silent, Celes took the towel and mopped the slime from between her legs. She looked in the wardrobe mirror to straighten her skirt and fix her hair. As ordered, she left with nothing to show that she had been raped beyond the soreness in her cunt and the lingering feeling of violation.


	25. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After her encounter with the carpenter, Celes tests the boundaries of her captivity.

The afternoon was grueling. Celes curled up on a velvet couch in the game room and stared out a porthole at the grassy stretch to the ocean cliffs just north of Albrook. She wondered whether she'd be able to speak at dinner unless spoken to. She had been told to shut up, and her mind twinged with anxiety.

It was frustrating. The commands had to be open to interpretation, somehow, or at least contextual. Otherwise, chance comments and metaphors would have resulted in bizarre behavior long before now.

In a flash of insight, Celes realized that she could test in advance which orders she would have to obey literally and which she could bend. When she imagined punching Setzer in the face, even with him far away and with no intent to act, the thought was shunted so hard out of her mind that she could barely remember what she'd tried to think about.

In contrast, when Celes imagined speaking at dinner, there was only that vague twinge of anxiety, as if it might not be allowed. _Shut up and come here,_ she argued with herself, _was his last command. It was clearly a compound command, and once that bastard released me and told me to come back tomorrow, it no longer applied. Or else I'd still be following him around._

Celes imagined herself at the dinner table. There would be some sort of fish. She imagined herself taking a bite and commenting on the fresh flavor. And she felt nothing.

Well, nothing other than a surge of triumph. The drug wasn't an absolute prison of her mind. She could wiggle the bars a little.

As the sun tracked across the game room floor, Celes repeatedly delved in her brain, imagining scenarios to test the boundaries of the orders which constrained her behavior. When she imagined walking through the engine room and out the loading bay doors, the drug reacted viciously against her desire to violate a clear order. But when she imagined cutting one of the balloon supports and rappelling down the side of the Blackjack, there was only vague discomfort. As if that probably violated the spirit of the order she'd been given, but not the rule.

The exercise also kept her mind off the lingering soreness from the carpenter's violation. Now she had to decide what to say about that. Or whether to say anything at all.

* * *

Dinner might as well have been ash in Celes's mouth. There was some sort of fish in a zesty sauce, some sort of vegetable. The light from the lanterns was set low and intimate.

She made only the smallest of talk with Setzer, watching him eat. The refined way he handled his utensils. The smirk that lingered just off the corners of his mouth when he talked about the busines deals that had kept him out late. The possessive, hungry look in his eyes when he commented that it must be the baby making her moody. 

"Just tired," said Celes, trying not to sound too curt.

Was it the right decision not to tell Setzer about the carpenter? If she told him about the incident in the nursery, he'd take the man apart. As satisfying as that would be, she could predict what else he might do. Prevent the crew from interacting with her again, likely. Put the ship on lockdown, maybe. Lock her in his bedroom while he went about his busines in town, that sort of controlling behavior seemed like him. She couldn't risk it.

And anyway, she needed the carpenter. He had become integral to her escape plan.

After dinner, Setzer almost dragged Celes back to their room. It was so routine by now that it was just habit to let her mind slip away from what was happening to her. If Setzer noticed anything different about her flavor when he ate her out that evening, he gave no sign. Perhaps lapping up another man's spunk was no different than eating himself out of her. And even though Celes was sore from hard use by a larger cock, by the time Setzer entered her, her body sang in a way that denied the existence of pain. There was only pleasure, and she let herself feel it because there was no reason not to.

It was almost over. Tomorrow, she was getting out of here. The carpenter was her way out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to rewrite this one a few times. I had a plan and then the character was a hard no to that plan, so I had to fiddle with it way more than usual.


End file.
